Pointless Agent Insanity!
by benignmilitancy
Summary: Smith, Jones, and Brown get bored... dun dun dunnnnnnnn!
1. Guitar Hero

_I don't own The Matrix!  
_

* * *

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part I: Guitar Hero"**

* * *

Once, deep within the Matrix, there resided a building—and with no architectural distinction whatsoever because this is Sydney, Australia and no one bothered to label most of the damn things—that housed three very mechanical, very monotonous Agents.

Bored Agents.

Reclining in a swivel chair so that his head was tilted ever so dramatically towards the ceiling, Agent Brown remarked, "I'm bored."

"I believe that statement had been unanimously established well over five hours, seventeen minutes, fifty-two seconds, four hundred and sixty-seven milliseconds and thirty-five million, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-six point eight attoseconds ago," Agent Smith replied, busily counting every individual molecule of every bullet in his Desert Eagle. "One, two, three, four…damn. One, two, three... damn. One… damn. One, two… damn. One…"

"My data banks confirm that 'damn' has no numerical value," Brown said. "Perhaps you are counting the wrong numbers?"

Apparently, the jostling of molecules was one of Smith's "Angry" buttons. No, no, "Very Angry" …well, more like one of his "Infuriated" buttons, since his Staples "Easy" button had been broken just the week before.

"ARGGGGH, DAMN YOU!" Smith shouted as he jumped on the desk. Snatching up Brown's Desert Eagle, he blasted his own gun in a minimum of 726 rounds, setting the Agent record for the most precise shooting of anything more than twelve inches away. "WHO'S NEXT?"

Just as Agent Jones entered the room, a single .50 AE met him in the face. Bloodless, he fell to the ground in bullet-time.

"Aw, shit!" Jones exclaimed before disappearing in a wave in green electricity. "Now I'll have to take the stupid creaky elevator all the way up again. Thanks a lot, Smi—"

And Jones was gone.

For now.

"SMITH!" Jones exploded, busting the door off its hinges and making it sound like a squeaky toy spontaneously combusted and then deflated—yes, in that order. "WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM!"

"YOU, THAT'S WHAT!" Smith's eyes shot streaks of blue fire.

"Oh no he did-n't!" Brown snapped from behind the swivel chair. Everybody took a moment to stare at him.

Brown sank back in the chair.

"Well, approximately eleven seconds have passed," Jones snarled, "so where's your real comeback, Smithy?"

"Your mama," said the Agent leader. He hopped curtly off his desk, landed with an unusually feline grace and, in an equally unusual liquid motion, glided past Jones out into the hallway. "And now, my short attention span needs a different form of stimuli to prevent from succumbing to the state of boredom, or the awareness of having no such specific stimuli to sustain sufficient interest in a certain state of affair."

An English major passing by Smith nearly died from his gross abuse of alliteration. Taken to a nearby hospital, the poor fellow was treated for severe psychological trauma and thus became able to speak exclusively in sentences that lack subjects, predicates, and clauses.

Mmm, irony never tasted so metallicky. 

* * *

****

GUITAR HERO CONTEST INSIDE

**3 – 11 PM TODAY**

**YOU CHOOSE SONG, LEVEL, DIFFICULTY**

**PARTICIPANT(S) WITH HIGHEST SCORES AT END OF NIGHT WIN SECRET PRIZE**

**$5.00 ADMISSION PER PARTICIPANT  
**

* * *

The three Agents, having forgotten their previous altercation, now stood at an empty corner on the side of the bowling alley. They stared, motionless, at its bold lettering. Beautiful, bold lettering which could banish their barren state of boredom…

"Please, God, no," gasped the English majors of the neighborhood, taking refuge in nearby trash cans.

Brown spoke first. "Hmm. An aptitude test of musical ability?"

Jones shook his head but never took his gaze away from the sign. "No, more like a test of will and the impulse of competition, so as to obtain such 'highest scores'."

"Whatever the true nature of such an event may be, we must investigate to prove whether or not it will diminish the consciousness of boredom which has befallen all of us," finished Smith, leading the single-file charge towards the front entrance.

In the distance, oblivious garbage men emptied the contents of the trash cans holding the frightened English majors. The ripping roar of the dump truck's engine silenced their cries that they were indeed still valuable to society despite their immensely growing numbers, taking off to the west and leaving the majors to suffer both in the grime and the terrible syntax of this seemingly run-on sentence.

Inside the bowling alley, a rather indifferent teenager sat behind the register while texting and chomping on Bubble Yum. He barely noticed three strangely dressed men approaching him, at least, not until Brown concocted the idea that bubble gum was relatively harmless and began to peer into the pink, growing mass of air emanating from the young man's mouth.

"What the frick—!" the teen yelped as the bubble exploded in Brown's face, knocking the Agent to the carpeted floor in bullet-time. Awed by what is simply one of the Matrix's major pains in the ass, besides big words, the kid nodded towards him in adolescent approval. "Beast!"

"Excuse me," Smith interjected, resisting the urge to glare at a stumbling Brown, "but we are here for this Guitar Hero contest you advertised."

"But that was two weeks a—" The kid stopped, realizing that Smith, Jones, and Brown all slapped down a fifty dollar bill simultaneously; being Agents, there were two things they really couldn't do: recognize the value of different dollar bills and aim a gun correctly.

"OK, yeah, come this way," he said.

Jones and Smith shared a silent grin and followed. Brown soon became busy with working the strangely sticky, wet pink substance from his reddish hair. "I do believe something has stuck to me…"

And, as soon as the trio was securely locked in the back room with the little TV, the kid ran blindly out into the street, his ecstatic "I'm free"s faintly muffled by concrete walls.

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Agent Brown sat at the drums. He had found a random peanut butter and jelly sandwich lodged in an ominous crevice of the room, but had not given much effort to sustain the thought, rubbing it furiously over his head. "The data banks confirm that peanut butter is effective in extracting bubblegum from hair."

Jones' features remained awash in the blueness of high-def in a dark room. "'Whatever floats your boat.'"

"What?"

"It's a human phrase I discovered the other day," explained Jones. "You like it?"

Brown clasped his hands together despite the peanut butter seeping through his fingers. "I love it!"

Smith straightened abruptly, and the other Agents saw his immediate disposition. The room fell into a tense quiet...of course, with the exception of the closet mice chanting, "Speech! Speech!"

"Gentlemen," he addressed the TV, "today, we are not Agents. We are not sentient programs bound by the Matrix. No, we are no longer slaves to rules, perimeters, laws or boundaries. We are more than the sum of our parts, establishing for ourselves a purpose greater than those any other Agent can possibly fathom. Today, we go anywhere and everywhere simply because we can. Because boredom will never again know a more formidable enemy."

Smith's fingers hovered dangerously over the guitar switch.

"Today, we ROCK!"

* * *

The sound, to human ears, was indescribable.

All over the Matrix, glass shattered; birds in mid-flight spontaneously combusted; men and women and children openly stood out in the streets of every country and wept in pain; cars crashed into each other on purpose; trees covered their ears; shattered glass shattered; NASA satellites ceased to function; the media blamed Chris Cornell for being off his meds today; worldwide stock market LED strips displayed sad smiley faces; incoming meteorites took suicide dives deep into the earth; the Man in the Moon rubbed his temples; the other planets started inching away; the sun shrank into itself; a major earthquake from the vibrations almost ripped Zion in two and Morpheus awakened from his mid-afternoon nap.

* * *

Humankind's worst pain lasted for four minutes, seven seconds—the duration of the song "No Sleep Till Brooklyn"—and at Ground Zero itself, celebration was taking place for the Agents' best four minutes, seven seconds of their (not really) lives. The radius of twenty miles surrounding the bowling alley looked much like the aftermath of dropping three atomic bombs in the same area:

Annihilated.

Eradicated.

Vaporized.

"Man, do we face deletion or what!" Jones panted, nearly snapping off Smith's hand to the wrist in a volatile high-five.

"'Or what!'" Smith said, "or we kicked ASS today!"

Jones beamed a rare, smug smile. "These 'Beastie Boys' will now be bowing down to my vocal prestige."

MEANWHILE,

Adam Yauch, Adam Horovitz, and Michael Diamond all cowered under their recording equipment, certain that the flaming ghosts of hell had come to make a fatal mockery of their music. Their producer, Mario Caldato, hid in a crawlspace in the other room, no longer wanting to be connected in his associations with them.

BACK AT GROUND ZERO, MINUTE THREE OF THE AFTERMATH,

Agent Brown lay slumped at the drums, all traces of peanut butter gone. On a dime, he regained full consciousness, complete with arms stretched toward an endless white sky:

"YEAH ROCK N' ROLL, WHOO!"

The other two cheered.

* * *

Swept inside the tempest of impending victory, Smith became giddily impatient, and, against his nature, jumped up and down like a schoolgirl.

A high school schoolgirl.

A sugar-high, high school schoolgirl.

A sugar-high, high school schoolgirl whose bedroom posters of Robert Pattinson and the Jonas Brothers suddenly came to life.

"What'sthescorewhat'sthescorewhat'sthescorewhat'st hescoreOMGIsaidOMGwhat'sthescorewhat'sthescorec'mo nJonesI'mdyin'overhere?"

Smith latched himself onto Jones' leg and began to furiously suck on his thumb. Jones soothingly but cautiously patted his head.

"It's OK, buddy, we're gonna get through this thi…! We got negative five! Negative six-oh-oh, my friend!"

"YES!" Smith instantly leaped upwards, sending Jones bowling into the nearest Agent, of which happened to be Agent Johnson, because the sole survivor of this entire debacle was overwritten by Johnson for reconnaissance purposes. Jones bowled into Johnson, crushing him into the nearby concrete debris. The force of such aforementioned event caused a powerful trajectory of concrete striking Brown in the head, of whom was still sniffing over the whole "Jones bowled" pun; this, then, became the cause of the gum that was previously stuck in Brown's hair to come unstuck and fall in bullet-time, providing Smith with the window of opportunity to catch the gum in his mouth in a picturesque way.

"Mmm," Smith chewed, "still fruity."

"I wouldn't chew that," warned Jones, "it has Brown's viruses all over it."

"'Another plane, another train, another bottle in the brain,'" was all Brown could retort, now suffering from delusions of fluffy, fickle colors flying past his field of vision.

The English majors in his digital brain shuddered.

Wiping off dust, Jones rose with the most sober of movements –this was to be a matter of grave solemnity. "Now."

"Whazzat?" Smith turned absent-mindedly, splattering pink all over Jones' face. The atmosphere of jubilance once more began to dissolve into the usual mode of Agent reaction. Jones seized the other's shoulders.

"The prize."

"What about it?"

"We were supposed to come in, obtain the highest numerical score possible, claim the secret prize and thus quell boredom."

In the background, Brown picked his nose with the plastic drumsticks.

"Oh yeah." Smith's abrupt nonchalance panicked Jones, which, in turn, caused even more panic to brew; panic always led to incessant insanity.

Before the English majors could interrupt, Jones screamed, "Come on, that doesn't even count as real alliteration! I is a vowel!"

"Ha ha, I is," Smith laughed as crickets chirped.

Jones began hyperventilating. "Our prize…our prize…where in bloody hell is our prize?"

Just to shut him up, Smith turned and remarked, "Oh, it's here."

However, Jones caught wind of his intent. "No. No. Oh, no no no. Oh no, you're not going to say something like 'We've won the prize of friendship,' are you?"

Smith chewed indignantly. "No, what the hell kind of Barney the Dinosaur crap is that?"

Happily drunk in a sea of colors, Brown sang, "I wuv you, you wuv me, we're a ha-ppy fa-mi-ly…"

He passed out.

Locking his jaws, Smith continued, "Anyways, I was going to say that our prize is finally conquering boredom, and the moral of the story is—"

"This story has no moral. It never had a moral, a plot, theme, or point. This story has no essence, just as you have none. Therefore, I shall proceed to destroy you immediately," Jones stated in monotone. His frozen iron stare put Hannibal Lecter to shame, with flat, razor-sharp blue discs boring into Smith's own orbs.

"OK," Smith agreed, spitting out the gum back onto Brown's unconscious head. He prepared himself for a duel of bad anime proportions, one that was absolutely necessary for shrieking thus: "TO THE DELETION!"

His words echoed in distant, ominous rumblings. By the law of death duels, it signaled the start of the fight.

Fortunately, with an impeccable ability to reawaken in the most appropriate moments, Brown shot up in his chair and screeched, "WITH A GREAT BIG HUG AND A KISS FROM ME TO YOU, WON'T YOU SAY YOU WUV ME TOO!"

This time, he fell dead, resurrected in a flash of emerald to his saner self, and stared blankly at Smith and Jones.

"We shall never speak of that again."

"Aw, I can't stay mad at you guys," Smith admitted, drawing Jones and Brown in what was supposed to be an embrace but ended up more as a hyperactive headlock. "I wuv you, too!"

And, looking in on from the Nebuchadnezzar, Barney the Dinosaur threw up.

THA END

_Stay tuned for "Pointless Agent Insanity! Part II: Of Coffee and Fanfics and txtng,like,OMGlmaorofllol!"_


	2. Of Coffee and Fanfics

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part II: Of Coffee and Fanfics **

**and txtng,like,OMGlmaorofllol!"**

* * *

It was supposed to be research.

Instead, it ended up more as a drawn out, silent battle of the hardiest contenders:

Staring match.

Back in the 1960s, or rather, 2060s, depending on whether one uses the Matrix time frame, Agents Smith, Jones, and Brown all challenged each other to humankind's toughest contest. Of course, they are not mortal in a human sense, so therefore the trio sat intently studying one another, while

Seconds passed.

Minutes passed.

Hours passed.

Days passed.

Weeks passed.

Months passed.

Years passed.

Decades passed.

Programs birthed, lived and died. People were freed; new Agents were created. Smith's building was torn down and in its place a mall was constructed. Not one Agent succumbed to the urge to blink in that very span of time, although all the while various Zionites ran around making faces at them. No, they did not blink…not even for the monkey faces…

Now, to 1999, or rather, 2199 depending on whether one uses the Matrix time frame. The setting is not Smith's building but instead, a local Tim Horton's.

A lone cell on the table rang.

"What the hell is that?" Brown asked monotonously. All three Agents gazed at the device. When it rang again, they cringed and ducked simultaneously under the table.

"A bomb planted by Zionites," Smith hissed. "Deploy the Sentinels!"

Jones consulted his earpiece. "Uh…they seemed to have left."

"WHAT!"

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

Zion and the machines were united in celebration for no reason whatsoever other than to party down; humans did the limbo, machines did the robot; from absolutely nowhere did the blasting bass of techno music come—

"Shut up!" the Wachowski brothers yelled from behind a rock.

—and everyone got drunk; Morpheus started the wave in a crowd of thousands; Trinity gleefully began giggling at nothing; Neo adopted an '80s accent, slapping people on the back while exclaiming "Whoa" and, "Most excellent, dude!"; a somehow intoxicated Sentinel tripped over a rock and Trinity fell out of her nonexistent chair laughing. 

* * *

BACK IN THE MATRIX

* * *

Smith fumed. Smith raved. Smith went about expressing his immense anger until—

"COFFEE!" Jones happily burst, hopping up and down near the front counter. The lady at the register simply gave him an odd look as she handed over a cardboard carrier with three Styrofoam cups in it.

Standing adjacent to Jones, Brown watched on with a certain detached, scientific air. Smith arrived behind them, temporarily forgetting his fit of rage. "What is wrong with him?"

"It appears to be some sort of system breakdown….corrosion, decontamination, or something of that effect, gradually diminishing his infrastructure," Brown picked up one of the Styrofoam cups for demonstration, swishing around a foreign caramel substance, "by means of ingesting…this."

"Brown," Smith began slowly. The words he were about to say signified the danger of the matter, great, grave, impending, inevitable danger threatening to swallow them whole in its vile throat. "In this case… it is necessary to…to…" He gulped. "Purge his system."

The echoes of his voice resonated in metallic shrieks. Overhead, thunderstorm clouds grouped together as the memory of system purging burned indelibly, eternally within the Agents' minds. It was the one thing in all digital creation, besides deletion, that could strike unspeakable terror in the heart of Machines.

The deepest pains of hell, Smith thought as the memory scorched brightly…

* * *

MANY YEARS AGO 

* * *

"DON'T DO IT SHERIDAN! MARTY NEEDS YOU!" Smith screamed, insane. Despite his rigorous attempts to wriggle free, the rope binding him to the metal fold-up chair refused to budge; Brown and Jones had cemented it to the concrete floor. "NOOOO!"

Smith's very codes as an Agent were corrupted when he came in contact with something pink, fluffy, and girly—the specifics are not quite known. One might say it is the equivalent of being infected with a deadly microorganism, such as Ebola. However, instead of subjecting him to deletion, the Machine parallel of human death, Jones and Brown decided instead on purging his system. System purging, then, is akin to the process one infected with tapeworm would have endured in the days of old: sitting, bound, mouth agape as raw pieces of meat laid in front of them. The purpose was to expel the parasite from the body. In Smith's case, the purpose was to expel the girliness from the code…through a slow and excruciating process, the only one they could think of:

30 seasons of soap operas on DVD, plus 18 straight hours of bonus materials on extra tracks.

"…like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives," declared the twelve-inch TV. Its screen glowered in sharp contrast to the steel dark of the room. Jones and Brown, having to constantly watch over Smith's progress, stood erect like night watchmen, guarding the remote with a scientific stoicism although on the inside both cringed in utter agony at the thought of another episode.

Smith's bare eyes, lacking the protection of their usual sunglasses, glazed over. His entire form ceased its struggle. His head now went limp, swinging to the side and resting on his right shoulder. His features became muddled and obscure as they turned flat.

Gingerly, Jones walked over and kneeled beside the patient. "Now, I'm going to ask you this once more…who is your favorite music artist?"

"Jesse McCartney," Smith gurgled.

Like clockwork, Jones rose and nodded towards Brown, who sighed and hit the "Play" button for the next episode.

* * *

PRESENT DAY 

* * *

Smith slumped over the counter wailing. "My favorite artist is U2! U2, _How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb_, I tell you! I've never even heard of 98 Degrees, please, please don't make me watch Theresa and Ethan make out again! MOMMY, I DON'T WANT TO!"

People gathered to watch Smith's nervous breakdown. One woman took a picture.

"Hey hey hey hey hey, no flash photography," Brown interjected, a hot smoothie glued to his left hand, "'cause, like, ya know… this… this is a… this is…" He glanced over his shoulder at Jones and began to snicker. "…like, a stick-up, so y'alls better run away an' stuff 'fore you get all shots up by my gun, so… yeah."

Both laughed hysterically when he produced a Desert Eagle from his back pocket. As the people scattered, Jones keeled over from laughter, nearly spilling his own hot smoothie all over the floor.

"What's wrong with you?" Smith scolded. "Don't you know better than to drive programs away without my orders? Especially during one of my unusually comical nervous breakdowns?"

"Aw, wittle kitty go meow now?" Brown chirped.

Smith stared at him.

"Hey Smith, don't be mad, get glad!" Jones explained, although his explanation didn't serve to clear matters up much.

Smith stared at both of them.

"OK, it's not working," Jones whispered, "Time for Plan B!"

"Just what the hell is this Plan B—" The Agent leader was cut off short as Brown stuck a cup in his face, forcing him to swallow down a strange, hot liquid. Immediately, his disposition changed. The substance provoked a chain reaction within him, altering the perceptions of his consciousness—what was black became pink, what was pink remained pink, what was red and blue all became green, and what was green turned yellow.

Thus…

"Holy shit, the Matrix is peeing on itself," he exclaimed rather loudly.

"Shh," Jones smiled, placing a finger on his own lips. "We prefer to say that it is taking a tinkle."

"Whoa," Smith blinked, enlightened. "Uh, hey lil peeps, what did I just drink?"

"COFFEE!" Brown and Jones exclaimed in unison. They laughed yet again and performed a high-five.

Meanwhile, Smith soberly concentrated on the substance in his hand, this magical elixir known as coffee…

He glanced up.

"Gnarly." 

* * *

FIVE MINUTES LATER 

* * *

"Never?"

"Never."

"How much never?"

"Never ever never."

This was the extent of the complexity of the Agents' new game, the Never Never Game. Of course, being the newest member of the coffee mindset, Agent Smith was the subject of the others' inquiry.

"Never ever never ever?" Jones challenged.

"Never ever never ever never forever," Smith retorted flawlessly.

Brown suddenly jumped up and down, exclaiming each word in synchronization with each bounce. "Never…ever…never…ever…never…forever…lever…sever…e ver…?"

"Never ever never ever never forever lever sever ever Nebuchadnezzar never ever!"

The Agents gasped.

"YEAH! Who's got skills!" Smith gloated. He began his embarrassing victory dance, only to trip and fall down the escalator stairs that went up. "DAMN IT!"

"Hehe, Smith went boom," Brown chuckled, while Jones' incredibly short attention span led him towards something shiny and glittering off in the distance. "Right, Jones? Smith go boom? Jones? ...Jones? Why aren't you laughing, Jones? Jones?"

Brown's voice became faint, empty echoes, unable to penetrate the glory of this newly prized object. It sparkled and twinkled within its own magnificent light, a beauty rare to the grit of the world, one whose jubilant wonder could shatter this reality into soft bits of glass.

And it called Jones.

"…ones? JONES!" Brown shouted fiercely, giving chase and ignoring the masses of bystanders who had arrived to witness the scientific spectacle of Smith continuously falling down steps which traveled upwards. Smith's own shouts were drowned out, many dark oaths of destruction muttered ominously as his head once again struck the moving string of stairs.

"It's a new revelation in physics!" a nearby doctor exclaimed, and the masses were engulfed in applause. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for science on the spot, and, as always, everybody began to party down, even the new Agents who had arrived on the scene to fix the glitch.

Smith swore.

Meanwhile, Jones cupped the precious "shiny" in his hands, delicately showing it off to Brown. "Look at it," he commanded, "It's so PREEEETTY."

Holding the object in front of the duo, it encapsulated both Agents.

Breaking the religious silence, Brown found the audacity to ask, "What does it do?"

"EVERYTHING."

An array of sweet beeps and rings abounded as Jones ardently pressed the buttons of the cherished device. A message swept Brown away in torrents of simplistic ecstasy:

OMG CAN U READ DIS?

"OMFG I CAN!" Brown shrieked, the resulting sound waves shattering the glass of a nearby Banana Republic window into a storm of shards. Paramedics immediately swarmed around the window, tending to the innocent khakis that were tragically caught in the disaster and were now bleeding heavily of vital polyester. They tried cardiopulmonary resuscitation but by then it was too late… the khakis wrinkled out and flat lined underneath the irons.

"No, dammit, you can't die!" one of them screamed, pumping furiously at the ironing board. He was covered with cotton shreds, grasping at the clothes with feverish horror. "No, no, no, you gotta live! My wife needs the new spring collection! Why, God, why? What am I gonna get her for her birthday now! Live, dammit, live! No!"

"Let go, Bob, just let go," his friend said, patting his shivering back. "They're in a better place now."

Bob looked up, his face stained with tears. "Wh-where? Heaven?"

"No," his friend said soothingly. "The Gucci store; they'll sell better as teen punk fashion anyway."

Having his conflict resolved, Bob rose and went out for ice cream at Dippin' Dots.

Jones and Brown stared ahead. "WTF?"

"It's a side effect of this drug called 'coffee'," Smith chided behind the two, his arm tucked inside a cast. "Crappy prep clothing gets destroyed by the hand of its mortal enemy…" The camera zoomed in on Smith's face, casting dark shadows upon it. His voice lowered to a whisper. "…the _cell phone_."

Agents Jones and Brown gasped in horror, not because of Smith's grave statement, but because Haley Joel Osmond ran up and kicked him straight in the nether regions for using his creepy tone of voice without the proper copyright. 

* * *

THREE DAYS LATER

* * *

Agent Smith lay on a hospital mattress, dressed in white. Brown sat at a nearby desk working at his laptop while Jones swiveled around in the chair making choo-choo noises.

"Okay," Brown said, typing something on the laptop. "According to these records, your… ahem… nether regions, as they are so aptly called… should be healed by now."

"Ugh, wanna check, Shirley Temple?" Smith groaned, in a bad mood.

Jones sighed and rose from his chair, prepared for the drill.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa, you ain't serious! I was joking, God!" Smith screeched, shifting from his place in the bed. "You are sick!"

Jones sat back down and pressed his temples to his head. "I feel sick."

"Sicko! Sicko! SICKO!" Smith accused, pointing.

Smith and Jones argued, shrieking vehemently. What they didn't notice was Brown's exposure to the Internet was slowly contaminating his code.

"We got mail," he said quietly.

Smith and Jones froze in an instant.

"What did you say?" Jones asked.

"We got… mail…" Brown repeated.

Smith's eyes widened in pure apprehension. He shook his head, advancing towards the laptop to unplug the charger from the wall before being sacked in the face with a carton full of Idaho red potatoes. "Noooooo!"

Although his voice was muffled by a hostile enemy potato, Smith screamed, "Don't answer it! Don't answer it! Do not heed its call!"

Brown's hands trembled over the laptop; he tried his restraint, but couldn't fully trump the urge… to sacrifice himself to the wonders of AOL.

The Agents held their breath as Brown opened the e-mail. They felt as though another soul had taken Brown's identity, just like Tyler Durden did in _Fight Club_; however, Brown's alter ego was much less Brad Pittier, and therefore contained a lesser degree of bombing-buildings-with-vinegar-and-soap coolness. Indeed, Brown's alter ego did shine through, but as soon as he entered the room, Jones and Smith whipped out their Desert Eagles and shot him dead before he could fully assimilate into Brown's body.

No one has ever heard from Bill Gates since.

However, it was too late. Brown clicked on the message. He leaned in closer to the screen, squinting to see. He pulled back curiously, reading the single line of text that blinked onto the screen.

"benignmilitancy has sent you a friend request!"

Brown clicked on the link that followed the line of text. A beep sounded, then an explosion of fireworks with the following message:

"ha ha suckas! X3"

The message then proceeded to fade out into continuous playing images of bad Bruce Springsteen videos choreographed by five legally tone-deaf Siamese kittens. Agent Brown closed the laptop matter-of-factly, turning to the others.

"This… 'benignmilitancy'… has deemed us as lollipops," Brown stated blankly.

Smith scratched at himself. "Yeah… what of it? It's not a human insult or a profanity, is it not?"

"No," Brown said slowly, worry slightly creasing his face, "but in some areas of Munchkin Land it is considered an invitation…"

"What? What? For what? What, Brown? What is it?"

Brown's face grew pale. He shuddered as he looked upon the closed computer screen, imagining the sheer horrors of the Boss singing "The Ghost of Tom Joad" accompanied by a chorus of random high-pitched meows.

"For a fanfiction writing contest."

* * *

INTERLUDE 

* * *

It was supposed to be research.

Instead, it ended up more as a drawn out, silent battle of the hardiest contenders:

Fanfiction match.

But what our beloved Agents didn't realize was the most important truth, the greatest causality in the universe:

FANFIC AUTHORS RULE THA WORLD! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

AHEM, ANYWAYS… I REIGNED SUPREME BECAUSE I AM AWESOME, AND SOMEHOW AGENT JONES GOT STUCK IN A SWIRLING VORTEX OF POPCORN DURING THE DUEL… HE WAS NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN… NAH I'M JUST PULLIN' Y'ALL'S LEG! IT WAS ACTUALLY A SWIRLING VORTEX OF COTTON CANDY. 

* * *

THA END

_Stay tuned for "Pointless Agent Insanity! Part III: The Matrix: Path of Neo… Yeah Right!"_


	3. The Matrix: Path of Neo, Yeah Right!

_A/N: Okay guys, I really hate to do this, but my brain's just not working right. For this chapter, Part III is gonna be broken up into three sections, A, B, and C. They will be chapters inside chapters; I am SO sorry for the inconvenience, I know it's a major pain to get cut off so short. My brain simply refuses to function as of late—writer's block!_

* * *

**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part III (A): The Matrix: Path of Neo…**

**Yeah Right!**

* * *

T'was a dark and stormy night when Agent Jones came home… Smith and Brown busied themselves during the storm with the theory that, if one were to open the window and allow the rain in, become "wet" and then "stick their fingers in an electrical socket," the result would cause a peculiar type of reaction called "electrocution." It was always a warning for humans, illuminated by the constant array of yellow stickers that adorned every electrical appliance in the house. Who was that stick man? Artists certainly never paid any respect to anatomical truth anymore.

"You are the most human," Brown said, "therefore your reaction will be most like that of a human's."

"What are you afraid of?" Smith asked. "Our reactions will be the same."

"I just don't think—"

"Dammit, Brown, we are AGENTS! We are IMMORTAL! Nothing can happen to us because we are NOT HUMAN!"

"This coming from the man who bursts into tears every time Ethan and Theresa get back together again... for five episodes."

Smith went to the bathroom, retrieved the showerhead, flushed the toilet and doused Brown with its painful water. "For one thing, my dear Brown, I believe you and your comrade Jones are to be responsible for my newfound partiality to soap operas. Second, I only seem to be the most human because of the depth of the Agent complexities I possess. A feeble mind like yours could not possibly understand the true nature of my being."

Floored between the sofa and the kitchen island under barrages of water, Brown mumbled something about Smith's true nature of non-being.

"What did you say?" Smith asked sadistically. "You are thirsty? Like a human is? Very well then, have a drink… on me!" He flushed the accursed toilet again, and just as the burning switched to freezing the flow of water suddenly stopped.

In its place, something else began to flow.

"_Shit_!" Smith screeched.

Brown, now drenched, slowly sat up and brushed himself off. "You know, Smith, you should indeed cease your verbal profanities. It's beginning to have a detrimental effect on this household."

"No, I'm being literal, it's real human shit," the Agent explained, running back to the bathroom. "The damn septic tank's backed up again."

"Oh FUCK," Brown stated.

Smith stared at him amidst the flow of waste covering the walls.

Brown shrugged. "Hey, I told you it was detrimental."

"It does not matter. Find some way to get this out, it's already filling up the bathtub and the knobs are not responding well. NOW!"

"The window, perhaps?"

"That'll have to do."

And as the two Agents ran for the only solution, the only haven they could find within this waste-filled hell, was the single moment when Jones opened the front door, carrying with him a large cardboard box. When Jones saw the showerhead, the eyes behind his sunglasses grew flat and wide; the next few moments slid by in bullet-time, as he met up face-to-face with the showerhead. Smith and Brown could only stare in horror as it knocked Jones and his package straight to the linoleum ground.

Time resumed again.

"What the HELL?" Jones shrieked. Smith and Brown braced themselves for yet another explosive altercation. "I go out for one hour, and expect YOU two to keep the house from destruction, MY house, of which I pay the mortgage with MY money and everything in it as well, with MY job as a waitress at the local restaurant—"

The talk of Jones's work was strictly taboo for that very reason.

"—and every day I receive the most peculiar stares from programs, MY programs, programs that I MYSELF am in charge of, and, apparently, along with TWO OTHER AGENTS TO SHARE THE WORKLOAD, BECAUSE THE MATRIX LIKES THE NUMBER THREE AND THUS, EVERYBODY WORKS IN THREES, BUT NOOO,

"I HAVE TO WORK ALONE, PUT ON A WIG, SMILE, AND SAY TO FORTY YEAR OLD CREEPERS,'HELLO, MY NAME IS ALICE! HOW MAY I SERVE YOU TODAY? MIGHT I RECOMMEND THE CHICKEN? WOULD YOU LIKE THE CHECK NOW, SIR? NO, THERE ARE NO MORE HIGH CHAIRS! PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE WAITRESSES, SIR! I REPEAT, DO NOT TOUCH THE WAITRESSES! I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS FIFTEEN PERCENT OF A $24.98 CHECK OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD! NO! IT IS NOT POSTED ON THE SPECIALS BOARD! GET A DAMN CALCULATOR! I AM GOING OUT FOR A CIGARETTE! TELL THEM TO SEAT THEIR DAMN SELVES! I DON'T CARE IF THEY ARE FROM THE SENIOR HOME, THEY STILL HAVE LEGS, RIGHT? NO? WELL TOO BAD!'"

Brown glanced over at Smith, who was already asleep.

Jones continued his rant. "Just who do you think you're fooling? Do you think I was born yesterday?"

Brown almost interjected, to say indeed, he was created yesterday, to replace Agent Greene after the "perfect world" disaster. Greene claimed to have created the perfect human world. It was designed to keep programs from escaping; a world in which one was granted what one wished for, and, in the end, the Matrix was overrun by giant pink bunnies.

Therefore, Greene was erased, and Jones was created in his place. And it just so happened to occur yesterday, at 1804 hours Western Pacific time on the 4th Monday of March 1999.

"For the love of Baudrillard, shut up," Smith hissed at Brown. "Just let him speak."

"—and to think I would have let you two play with this new PlayStation 2 I bought! Oh well, if you can't be good little boys when Mommy is not home, then I shall take it back to the nice cashier man at Wal-Mart." Turning around for dramatic effect, Jones picked up the package and headed for the doorway.

Smith and Brown, with eyes wide and alert, threw themselves down at the other Agent's feet, shredding any hope of dignity they still might have had. Jones struggled on down the hallway, ignoring the pleas of the comrades attached to his legs. Their waste-covered suits left twin trails down the carpeted floor; yet Jones persisted for the stairwell.

Meanwhile, a disgruntled Thomas Anderson left his apartment, dragging behind him three garbage bags to the front yard for Tuesday pickup. Apparently his landlady had gotten rid of her old collection of stuffed pink bunnies, and whenever she got rid of her collections, she employed Thomas to carry them out front.

Although he did not know why, he had always thought they were staring at him. Watching him. Whispering strange, pink bunny things about him. And somehow, he was glad for today, glad for the thought that at some point today they would be shredded alive inside someone's giant garbage disposal, or, at least, rot their insidious pink stuffing inside an acid landfill by the side of a highway somewhere near Detroit, or maybe be claimed for liquidation by the IRS, whichever would happen first.

For once, Thomas hoped the IRS would win.


	4. There Is No Rogaine

"**Pointless Agent Insanity! Part III (B):**

**There Is No Rogaine"**

* * *

Smith studied the choices before him.

Smith looked up.

This was the most vile of secrets… it had to be discreet. The very balance of the universe depended on it. All would come to ruin or culmination because of this.

He looked down.

He frowned.

He ran a troubled hand through his hair.

There was no Rogaine.

There was no Rogaine, only… _himself_.

If you catch my drift.

"Um," he said, stuffing fifteen boxes of hair growth products in his shopping basket, "this is research. Yeah, research. It's how, uh, Zionites will respond to various forms of torture, starting with men's hair growth products and then progressing down to…" He tossed a couple of gels and combs into the basket. "To the alpha-wave enhancing effects of…" He studied a small purple box. "'Strawberry Unicorn Sunshine Rainbow Banana Sparkle Fruit.'" He shrugged, throwing it in. "Meh."

As he placed more products in the basket, another shopper's cart rammed into him.

"What the hell?" he shrieked. He rubbed at his sides. "Someone shall perish for that!"

He whipped out his Desert Eagle, firing off seventy-two clean rounds. All of the bullets had wrapped around their targets in a circle, leaving the people before him untouched, actually in better health because the shock waves of the bullets impacting the air had caused a mass body detox. The people blinked, having each shed fifty pounds, then sprung up with joy and ran out the door to go join an international marathon.

"Hey, I'm getting pretty good," Smith mused. "Last time they only went to Weight Watchers."

"Shh, be quiet, strange man," said the program Thomas Anderson. "I'm hiding from them."

"What—" Smith began; but Thomas placed a finger to his lips and looked around suspiciously.

Thomas Anderson was disguised as a toddler riding in his mother's cart, who turned out to be Dujour, the woman with the white rabbit tattoo. She stood quite conspicuously, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke into Smith's face.

"Wanna hit, kid?" she asked, extending the cigarette to Thomas.

"You have got to be kidding me," Smith said.

Thomas frowned and pointed behind him. Smith whirled around, only to see Agents Brown and Jones sprinting down the frozen foods section with a butterfly net and a pair of pink bunny slippers. Thomas shivered at the thought of the pink bunnies…

"They're dangerous," Thomas said. He leaned out of the cart, whispering toxically. "One of them is a waitress at the noodle shop down on Main Street, named Alice Jones…" He pointed to Jones. "She ain't right. There's something off with her, I tell ya. She just ain't right."

Smith ground his teeth. "And the others?"

"Well, I haven't seen them myself," Thomas said. "But I heard they're deadly."

Smith grinned slightly. His proud reputation preceded him.

"Didn't one of them fall down the escalator at Woolworth's?" Dujour asked. Smith blew a poison dart into her neck, and she collapsed.

"Look, I'll help you hide from… _them_…" he sighed, stuffing her dead body into the ice cream freezer and thinking of all the innumerable ways he could use rusted medieval tools to disembowel the two absolute dimwits he had the misfortune of calling cohorts. "But you have to help me with something in return. Deal?"

"Deal," Thomas said. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and whined for sugary cereals as Smith pushed his cart down the aisle. 

* * *

LATER 

* * *

"Damn, dude," Thomas said. "This 'Path of Neo' game is hard."

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST PICK THE RED PILL," Smith screeched. "ALL YOU DO IS PRESS LEFT AND HIT X! HOW HARD CAN IT BE?"

Thomas winced as the screen twinkled with the soft green light of the Matrix code.

"Now, now, these things can't be rushed." He inhaled sharply. "Just you wait. I'll get it for sure this time; I can smell it."

"Sorry, that was me," Smith said sheepishly, ducking into the bathroom.

Two minutes later he emerged from the bathroom, triumphant. The toilet had sucked him into Narnia, whereupon his arrival he was imprisoned and forced to labor as a resident dragon slayer. He dripped wet with the blood and gore of victory. Not today, he laughed. Not today.

Two minutes later Thomas was still stuck on level one, carefully considering his choices.

He whispered. "Hmm… blue or red candy… both are so pretty… yum, yum… ugh!" He looked up, pointing to the screen. "Why is this guy wearing a green tie with a purple shirt? Like, ew! Okay, Tom, focus, you can do this. Just pick a pill. Pick a pill. Pick a pill. Pick a pill. Pick a pill. Pick a—seriously, what's up with those John Lennon glasses? Go to Len's Crafter's like everybody else, you jackass!"

Smith seized the controller and beat the game on Hard Mode in less than 0.00000005 seconds—0.0003 seconds later than usual because he was feeling tired from slaying dragons.

"This is not the purpose for which I enlisted your assistance, Mr. Anderson," Smith said.

"Tommy," Anderson corrected, busily searching for the M&M he had shoved up his nose a moment earlier.

"I wonder if the Wachowski Brothers are having a better time than this," Smith grunted.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

The Wachowski Brothers sat at the desk of a movie agent.

"Okay, let's hear some ideas for your next movie," the rep said. "Throw them at me."

Without a word, the Wachowski Brothers walked out of the room. The rep raised an eyebrow, puzzled. He shifted in his seat and folded his hands together in the sudden quiet.

Moments later two tons of script crashed through his ceiling, dropped in from a ten story crane.

"They're just some ideas. They're not much, but I think today's demographic audience will enjoy them," Andy said to the rep's crushed, bleeding corpse.

The brothers sat together in the crane.

"ALL HAIL THE NEO, FOOLS!" Larry screamed, raising his arms.

"Larry, Larry," Andy said, shaking his head and patting his brother's shoulder. "Nuh-uh. We're over that, remember? We have a thing called straight jackets for that."

"What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" Larry said.

Andy punched him stiff in the face, accidentally knocking down the throttle to "super ultra wreckage speed" and destroying half of Chicago in the process.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

Jones and Brown had finished up their game of "Catch the Invisible Butterfly at the Supermarket." Nightfall descended over the edge of the lake they drove by, shrouding the waters below in an ebony shadow.

"Damn butterfly," Jones groaned. He scratched his head with the end of the butterfly net.

"He's quite capable of ruse, if I do say so myself," stated Brown.

"I have already expended my reserves of 'fun'," Jones said, his voice pitched full of sorrow. "What shall we do next?"

Brown grinned and threw his pair of bunny slippers into the lake.

"'Swim for the Pink Bunny Slippers in the Lake and Do Not Drown in the Process,'" Brown said, braking. "Go!"

As Jones leapt into the dark water, Brown slammed down on the gas pedal to the Audi, cackling hysterically.

"Sucker! Lakes don't drown people; people drown people!" he squealed.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

A few hours later, Thomas had somehow managed to gather enough brain cells in his head to perform the simple task of styling Smith's hair. Amazingly enough, Smith had somehow managed to gather enough patience in his mind to allow him to do so.

"You're done," the program said, turning off the sink faucet. "How does it feel?"

"It doesn't seem any different," Smith said, examining for any change in the structure of his hair's code. Although it was the same type of code, he noticed that it did seem to glow a little brighter… a bit brighter than usual. "What did you use?"

"Let's see," Thomas read the box. "'Strawberry Unicorn Sunshine Rainbow Banana Sparkle Fruit.'"

Smith's eyes widened behind his black sunglasses.

"Dude, chill out," Thomas said. He wiped his hands on a towel. "It's not that bad."

"Not that ba…?" Smith's question was silenced by a great, horrendous sight that met him in the mirror.

Smith screamed, his voice ablaze with rage. He tore at his hair and scratched at the mirror with his nails.

"My hair… my beautiful, full, thick, shiny, luscious hair… it's turned PURPLE!" Smith shrieked. "To entertain even the notion, for a weak, rare moment, that I ever trusted a mere human… but YOU! You, my sir, are the worst, most odious, most despicable, most pathetic, vile, terrible, horrid waste of stinking human mass I have ever had the utter misfortune of knowing! EVER!"

"Aw, gee, you really think so? Well gosh, thank you so much! I love you too, strange man," Thomas gushed, his face turning red.

Smith promptly shot him in the face.

"What are you doing in my house?" Thomas asked, walking in to see the dead body lying on the floor. He wore his business suit.

"You… y-you…" the Agent sputtered.

"You killed my stunt double," Thomas sniffed. "Named 'Keenan' or 'Keanu' or 'Kenny' or something weird like that. That ain't cool, dude. I paid him big bucks to watch over my shit while I was gone, you know that, right?"

Smith stared at him.

Thomas tossed his suitcase on the floor. "Look guy, I don't know what your get-off is in all of this; all I know is, I gotta shit. Right now. So leave or it won't be pretty."

Smith started involuntarily convulsing. Thomas tilted his head.

"Why is your hair that color, strange man?"

"YOU STAINED IT PURPLE, YOU ARSEHOLE!"

Thomas frowned, spotting the box of hair coloring on the sink counter. Picking it up, he studied it for a moment. "No, no," he protested, pointing to the box's description, "here it says it's only a soft violet blend of red lavender subtly mixed in with the lush hues of blue forget-me-not…"

Smith glared the fires of hell and damnation at him.

"So purple, yeah," he said, jumping out the nearest window as a Bazooka bombed his bathroom door. 

* * *

THA END

_A/N: This is why Smith hates Anderson so much. =D _

_Again, I apologize for the story's abruptness._


	5. I Am Teh Walrus

**"Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part III (C): I Am Teh Walrus"**

* * *

Today we find our lovable but dysfunctional trio watching themselves on screen for the premiere of _The Matrix. _Halfway into the movie, a lone figure stood as a dark shadow in front of the screen.

"This is bull," Smith said, sucking on an almost empty straw of extra-large root beer. He rattled the ice cubes around indignantly. The images before him flashed hatefully, scornfully…mockingly. "I am NOT that Australian!"

"Yeah, you are," Jones said, dueling Brown to the bitter end with a pair of Pixie Sticks.

"Shut up," Smith commanded.

"Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, you're an Aussie, mate," Jones taunted.

"Aussie," Brown repeated.

Smith frowned. "You're Aussie too, Brown, so shut up…again."

"Not as Aussie as you," Brown said. "_Hugo._"

"Burn!" Jones exclaimed.

Smith glowered and sat back down.

"OW, MY EYE! MY BEAUTIFUL, NONDESCRIPT SUNGLASSED EYE! YOU BROKE IT, YOU CLUMSY OAF! NOW IT DOESN'T WORK ANY MORE! YOU'RE GONNA PAY FOR THAT!" Brown screamed at Jones suddenly, clutching at a gaping, gory hole on the left side of his face.

"ME! YOU BROKE TWO OF MY LUNGS!" Jones screeched from the operating table as a team of doctors performed open-heart surgery on him. "SOMEONE'S GOING TO PAY FOR THAT 'CAUSE I SURE AS HELL DON'T HAVE THE INSURANCE!"

Smith grinned, having secretly replaced the Pixie Sticks with a pair of fourteen-foot jousting sticks.

"No one calls me Aussie," he said, glaring dangerously at Hugo Weaving, "and lives to tell the tale."

"Why you gotta be so mean?" Hugo Weaving said, crossing his arms. When Smith said nothing, he shrugged, put on his vendetta cape and rode a flying griffin off into the dying sunset.

Smith looked up.

"Weirdo," he said as the other two Agents flat lined.

* * *

And then they grew bored. Again.

Because they had no one else to turn to for such times of ennui, the Agents went to the house of the notorious idiot Thomas Anderson.

Some had said he was brilliant, one of the world's finest hacking minds, able to crack a code's logarithm in less than ten seconds. Others said he was horrendously stupid, unable to fall down the stairs without stopping to ask for directions and half a road map recalculated seven times from MapQuest on the exact coordinates as measured by his satellite GPS.

That's why Thomas and the Agents got along _very _well.

"Pink bunnies! THE UTTER FLUFFINESS OF DEATH!" Thomas shrieked.

"Popcorn! THE 2% SATURATED FAT AND ASSORTED CORN OILS!" Jones shrieked.

Smith smiled as he switched the horror slide show between images of the two despised things, watching with a sadistic pleasure the alternation of their screams.

"NOOO!"

"NOOO!"

"NOOO!"

"NOOO!"

"No! Back!" Thomas screeched, jumping behind a pile of dirty laundry. "I'm part of… I'm part of the underground Socialist Mafia!" he spat.

Smith frowned. He switched off the computer.

"What's the underground Socialist Mafia?" he asked.

Thomas snorted, putting his hands on his hips.

"I AM the underground Socialist Mafia, son!" Thomas shrieked, shaking his head wildly.

"Well then," Smith said, "that makes me the cult of personality."

Jones and Brown stared at one another, and they knew in an instant…

The dreaded "I Am" match was about to begin.

Thomas stuck out his tongue. "I'm the Queen of Sheba."

"I'm the King of Rock, there is none higher," Smith said, tilting his head. "Sucka MCs should call me sire."

"I'm King Henry the Eighth I am!" Thomas declared.

"I am the egg man, they are the egg men, I am teh walrus!"

"I am the ice cream man."

"No… Mr. Anderson… I… am your father," Smith said, breathing heavily. "Damn… it's hot in this room…"

As he crossed the room to open the window Thomas stared at him with the usual blank expression.

Smith shrugged. "I was just… kidding," he said, looking for the right human phrase to use.

Thomas dropped his head. "Fine, you win."

Smith smirked triumphantly as the Agents breathed a sigh of relief. "Damn right I win."

* * *

"I'm bored," Thomas said, lying on the couch as another rerun of _That 70's Show _began to play.

"I love you," Donna Pinciotti said to Eric Foreman.

"I know," Eric said, lifting an eyebrow; and the audience laughed until the government busted in with a full military force and shot them all dead.

"HAPPY DAYS RULES ALL 70'S SHOWS, MOTHAFUCKAS!" they shrieked. "We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming."

Smith, Jones and Brown stared at the test screen, unblinking, for a full, silent ten minutes.

"I think I'm going to need a human brain transplant after that," Brown said, "since the memory of that incident imprinted itself indelibly onto my databanks and thus cannot be deleted by conventional means."

Jones, having hoped that Brown was referring to the usual kind of deletion, sighed and put away his hockey mask and bloodied twin machetes. "Not today, fellas," he apologized. "Maybe tomorrow we'll get 'im."

Watching this, Thomas rose from the couch and turned off the TV, getting a brilliant idea. "I know! We'll take over the world… so nothing like this ever happens," he said.

The Agents stared at him.

"Take over the world?" he asked. "You know… have the run of the place?"

They shifted a little from their places, interested by this proposal.

"Come on," Thomas whispered, pointing quietly to the basement, "I'll show you."

And down in the darkness they went.

* * *

Thomas swept away the dust from the table with a long, outstretched arm. The iron darkness that encaged them seemed to penetrate their very minds with sharp silence.

In the middle of the room lay a large, fortified metal safe, sitting alone, encased with bulletproof shields and microscopic laser detectors. A dim blue light swung overhead from a cone-shaped shade, casting blunt gray shadows from the cobwebs and dustings of time.

With hands of careful precision, Thomas unlocked the box with a digital code and activated two retina identification scans.

The box beeped once in confirmation, then clicked open.

"With this, we shall rule the world," Thomas said. "None shall stand in our way."

The Agents smirked at one another as he pulled out with the folder containing the intricate plans, preparing himself to explain the extremely sensitive, incredibly dangerous logistics of the plan for taking over the entire world. Their destinies were at stake, not to mention the fact of their very existences. Here, in the hands of a mastermind, it unfurled beautifully, like poetry… it was a thing of radiance, down there, being birthed… once put into effect, it would burst into its true potential, and grow exponentially, a thing of terrible power, a thing of unthinkable magnitude. Smith closed his eyes, savoring the anticipation. It was going to be absolutely glorious, a grand herald of their cold, authoritarian magnificence.

Thomas opened up the manila folder and began reading.

"We shall cut off the world's supply of soap suds until every national government decides to comply with our demands for domination," Thomas said. "Until then, every _Bed, Bath and Beyond _and_ JC Penny's_ in the world shall sell, instead, only those pugnacious rock exfoliators, and all of the world shall have to scrub without those precious poofy loofas that make you itch bad in really embarrassing places for six hours afterward, and at someplace important, like at a conference meeting, and I mean a _really _important conference meeting, you know, like that one you know you need to kill the audience with, because if you don't, your boss will give you the pink slip and a boot up the ass after your terrible quarterly review, and during the meeting you totally realize you really need to shit but you can't, so you just do it in your suit pants, because no one's looking, and, I mean, you just _do _it, like, let it out, like heaving a great big sigh of relief, but then halfway through the process you realize you had just eaten lunch at the Mexican place earlier that afternoon, where you _knew _you shouldn't have had the super burrito bean supreme with the three cheeses, but you did it anyway because your Nicaraguan friend Jorge slapped you on the back and told you to 'just live a little, muchacho,' right before he blackmailed you about those drunken-ass pictures on Facebook, and now you're trying to hold in your runny shit with your hands, and then you think, _Oh, hell no! _because now the conference is over and now you have to shake hands with all the top CEOs, and now _they _gotta shit, and then they shake _your _hand, and then when you go home you don't know whose shit is whose, because the shit is all the same, yours mixed in with some strangers' shit you never met before, and you try to scrub it off with those _damnable perfumes that don't do shit but add shit to your shit, and now you're standing shitful in the shitty shower just full of shit_—" Thomas paused to take a breath. "—and now, with this brilliant plan in effect, absolutely no blond-haired tan forty-three-year-old-something woman who tries to pretend she is still twenty-two by wearing obnoxiously large white plastic sunglasses on her head while chewing pink bubblegum noisily and listening to LL Cool J on a puke-green iPod Nano Touch shall ever open another sample of _God-Awful-Bag-of-Flaming-Dog-Shit-Disguised-as-Sup er-Tropical-Cinnamon-Bubble-Burst-Candy-Land-Mushr oom-Fantasy-Cloud-Aqua-Fresh-Lemony-Lime-Yummy-Cit rus-Freezer-Burn-Car-Freshener-Pine-Sol-Lavender-W asher-Dryer-Lint-Chanel No. 5_ in another cheap knock-off department store ever again! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The Agents all died just hearing the plan, the graves of those assimilated programs' bodies marked but with one word for each, in a neat little row of headstones:

_What. The. Fuck._

* * *

"A duck," Smith said. "Your brilliant plan is going to use a duck to cut off the world's supply of soap suds."

"Not just any duck," Thomas said. "BEHOLD THE ALMIGHTY RUBBER DUCKY!"

A large red curtain lifted, revealing a large duck costume made of paper mache.

Smith lifted an eyebrow.

* * *

"I don't recall this being in the plan," Jones whispered.

"Shut up, they'll hear us speaking to him if they catch our frequency," Smith replied harshly.

"Fuck dat shit, bitch," Brown said. "I ain't goin' out like no punk ta get my ass busted up like no cappin' bitch."

Brown stood in the middle of the store, and the only thing recognizable about him was his Agent's earpiece. He had gone undercover, at first as a rubber ducky piñata, but when he was almost mauled to death by an onslaught of sugar-high children and half the crew of _Jackass _he decided on another plan of action: that is, posing as a white rapper pitching various perfume samples to old women at Woolworth's.

"Yo, shawties," he said, sauntering toward a group of women who just had arrived from the senior home. "Who wanna get summa dat shit?"

He held out the tray of perfumes and one of the old women whacked him in his baggy shins with her walker.

"Wow," Thomas said, "that guy's got a real talent for stereotyping."

Smith grumbled. He seized Jones' earpiece and barked an order into Brown's receptor.

"You be trippin' epic, Smith-dawg," Brown said, "but you be trippin' 'aight."

Hitching down his belt over a pair of red plaid briefs, tilting his white hat to the left, sticking out his heavily tattooed chest and flashing the ladies the fifty-three solid bars of gold alloy that hung from his neck, Brown proceeded down the mall department to go directly into the belly of the beast and scope out enemy lines.

He walked with rhythm, with style, with spice… that is, until a stray strand of hair got caught in his eyes, and, screaming blindly, he tripped into the community nudist pool located exactly below the department store; and Jones, Smith and Thomas had a collective brain hemorrhage rofling and emoticoning in the 18-million hit YouTube video, "White Posa', Y'all Be Trippin', My Brotha.'"

* * *

THA END


	6. Enemy Potatoes and Electric Bills

_A/N: This chapter is going to seem more abrupt than the others. Not to worry, the characters mentioned and the evil underground Socialist Mafia's plot to take over the world will be explained in much detail in the chapters to come. I'm still gathering all the ingredients to make hilarity stew, so now I'm cutting back a bit… =D_

_P.S. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what the "real" electric bill is, wink, wink._

* * *

**"Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part IV: Enemy Potatoes and Electric Bills"**

* * *

Things could not have possibly turned out any other way.

Things could not have possibly turned out any other way.

Things could not have possibly turned out any other way.

Things could not have possibly turned out any other—

"Where the hell is he?" Smith shrilled. His patience with their undercover "white rapper" had worn down to a very thin layer.

It was now twilight of the third day of the operation to take over the world. Smith blinked, stretching his neck upwards. The sky was unusually dark for what had seemed a strange number of hours…for no sun rose over the horizon.

"Idiot!" Smith screeched, delivering a swift kick to Jones' torso. "You obviously did not remember to pay the electric bill!"

"What is this 'electric bill' of which you speak?" Jones asked.

The Agent leader plunged a fist into the wall, ripped out a handful of blazing, hissing wires, scribbled an infinite number on a piece of paper and thrust it onto Jones' forehead with a thumbtack.

"Oh," said Jones, bleeding. "So THAT'S what that thing was. I simply thought I had received requests to become a Russian mail-order bride by the hydro-electric company."

"Nope," Thomas said, as he casually unwrapped a candy bar. "I ain't touchin' that."

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

A group of people desperate to kill themselves sat around their leader in a dusty, desolate, run-down hotel room.

Their leader, a prominent figure clad in black and wearing suspiciously John Lennon looking sunglasses, sat in a plump red chair, staring at a blank TV channel.

"Hot damn," he said, clicking the remote, "_Happy Days in Outer Space _has got to be the worst show I have ever watched." He shifted in his seat. "I mean, it's just so dark out there! How's Fonzie ever supposed to fix anything and go _'eyyy'_ anymore when there's no juke box swirling around in that giant black hole?"

Sighing for the fifth time, Trinity got up and turned on the TV.

"Hey!" Morpheus barked, waving the remote at her. "You know the rules."

Trinity nodded with a .44 revolver stuck halfway up her mouth.

"No one touchie-touchie the telly-telly without my permission-permission!"

Trinity, with eyes empty, nodded again, wondering why he was ever born into any realm of existence as he turned the TV off.

Morpheus studied the screen.

"Now we will strike," Morpheus said contentedly, clasping his hands together and half-smiling.

"Why do you smile like that?" Switch asked as Apoc helped tie a noose around her neck. "It really creeps me out when you do that."

Morpheus burst into tears.

"I was born a Botox-addict baby! God, why won't they leave me alone!" he shrieked, burying his face in his hands while Mouse and Cypher each drank down a gallon tank of gasoline, opened their mouths, lit a pair of matches and swallowed them whole.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

"My name is John Constantine; IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, I EXCISE YOU FROM THIS BODY!" Thomas screamed, bashing a vial of holy water over Jones' thick skull.

"Wrong movie," said Smith.

"Um," said Thomas. "Moo?"

Smith stared at him.

"He's in position," Jones reported.

Smith snorted in disbelief, but as he did, his mortal enemy, the red Idaho potato, stalked in the depths behind him.

Jones and Thomas stared.

"What?" Smith said.

"B-behind you…" Thomas whispered.

Smith snorted again.

This time the horrid, vile potato attached itself to his face and got stuck up his nasal passages, trying to suffocate him utterly from the resulting salt reactant asphyxiation.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

Morpheus and the rebels loitered in the hotel parking lot, having been kicked out by nonexistent ghost management.

Morpheus contemplated the revolver he held in his hand.

"It's the true question of all existence, my friends…is this _really _a gun, or do I just _think _it's a banana?" he said.

Switch blinked twice; apparently those eighty overdoses of Tylenol just didn't work for her. Nor the noose. Nor the iron saw. Nor packing entire lead magazines into an Uzi. Nor the twenty-five hours of listening to ABBA's discography. "What?"

"Oh, yes!" Morpheus said, patting the barrel tenderly. "Bananas are notorious for disguising themselves as revolvers. Sneaky little buggers, yes they are!"

Trinity groaned.

"Why don't you just kill me now?" she asked.

"That can be done," Morpheus said. He aimed the gun at point blank range.

Since the gun was aimed correctly this time, at another person instead of at his head, Apoc rushed over to him to wrestle it out of his grip.

"No! No! I think she's good," Apoc said. "Put the gun down. Put the gun down. Morpheus, put the gun down. Put the…put the gun down. Yes, put the gun down. Put the gun down. Put the gun down. Put the…put the damn gun down! No, your other hand… the one with the gun… yes, you are holding a gun… no, a gun is not a taco… no, we have no money left for tacos, we spent it all on cable at the hotel… no, there are no tacos at home because we all live in an underground cave and no one makes tacos there… no, you are not a Yeti if you live in an underground cave… yes, I know Yetis like tacos too… and guns… son of a bitch, it's gonna be a long night… there!"

Apoc forced down his hand from the aiming position, twisting it behind his back and snapping the bone—rubber bone, that is, since Morpheus had tragically lost both arms in the Great War of the Cheap Wal-Mart Plastic Toys, in the midst of the pivotal Battle of the Raining Gumball Drops and My Little Pony Sparkles, having both amputated at a Strawberry Shortcake MASH unit before being instilled with prosthetic limbs using the remains of Gumby and Stretch Armstrong. As long as small children in Zion used his arms as stretchy jump rope he would never forget the ultimate sacrifice of those heroes lost…

Morpheus pouted, his bottom lip jutting out in a stubborn sulk.

"But my left hand is my katana-wielding ninja-ass-kicking hand! What am I gonna do without my ninja-ass-kicking hand?" he wailed.

"If you're kicking someone's ass, aren't you technically using your foot to do it?" Cypher asked.

Morpheus whirled around, and, with his free hand, sprayed him in the eyes with a can of Cool Whip.

"Silence, ye wretched mortal! Do not question my questionably questionable ways!" he declared, raising his right arm to the sky.

A low rumbling sounded, and a brief crescendo began to play as dark, ominous, thundering storm clouds gathered over the parking lot—

Mouse spotted a yellow piece of paper fluttering on the windshield and picked it up.

"Hey, look at this!" he said, motioning to the others. "Morpheus got a parking ticket!"

Don Davis' chorus looked once at Morpheus, then ran away.

"NO!" Morpheus shrieked, kneeling to the ground. "MY PERFECT LEGAL RECORD IS RUINED! I AM NOW A CRIMINAL BEFORE THE EYES OF THE LAW!"

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

A crackle sounded. The link resumed online functioning through the static.

Agent Brown's voice slurred in Smith's ear.

"Zzzzt… yeah… zzzzt… whadd'hya want? I tol' ya already, I paid mah due-hues, boss mahnnn…zzzzt…"

Smith frowned. "Are you drunk?"

"Uhhhhmmmmm… lemme check…" A crash sounded, along with the sound of tinkling glasses and a thousand duck chorus singing their version of "Baby Got Back": _I like big ducks and I cannot lie! ...You otha duckas can't deny! ...When a goose walks in with an ittty-bitty waist and a round wing in your face you get sprung! ...Wanna fluff up tough 'cause you notice that leg was stuffed!_ "Mahy-beee? Hayyy Carrrrlosss, am I drunk o' wha…? Whadd'hya mean i'sssh Ladiesh' Night? Tueshday wash yeshterdai!"

"Well, where are you? How are you now?"

"We good in da hood, Meester Rahgers," Brown replied. "Ain't dat right, Mister Rogers?"

"You be trippin' 'aight wit' me, white boy," Mister Rogers said, throwing an Olympic torch into a Colombian field of…plants. "BURN BABIES BURN!" He yelled. "MISTER ROGERS ISH GONNA BE SIX FEET DOWN UNDA TONIGHT, BE-YOTCHES!"

Smith's eyes lowered. He shut off the communicator, then crawled in between Jones and Thomas for naptime.

"I don't know what is more disturbing," he whispered, "the fact that Mister Rogers is half-baked somewhere in a Colombian drug field or the fact that I almost get killed by a random potato every time I exhale through my left nostril."

* * *

THA END


	7. In the Age of Underpaid Extras

_A/N #1: I'M BACK WITH A NEW CHAPPIE AND A TRUCKLOAD OF A/Ns! YAY A/Ns! OKAY, PEOPLE, HANG ON TO YOUR SPATS! THERE'S GONNA BE A LOT OF THESE, SINCE THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CHAPPIE…_

_A/N #2: …INTERLUDE! HEHEHE. GOTCHA. WE WILL RESUME REGULAR BROADCASTING IN THE NEXT CHAPPIE…_

_A/N #3: Special thanks to my reviewers…you are awesome. Cookies for you!_

_CeruleanPhoenix7—My awesomely loyal reviewer and fellow brilliant writer (check out the Fringe fics!), COOKIES TO YOU! And also an upcoming dedication… wink, wink._

_glitterthorn—COOKIES TO YOU! Thank you so much for the compliment…I aim to please._

_FREE COOKIES TO REVIEWERS OF __POINTLESS AGENT INSANITY!_

_A/N #4: LIABILITY ALERT! NO REFUNDS! __Pointless Agent Insanity!__ never said it would ONLY include Agents Smith, Jones, and Brown…so read at your own risk… and wear a helmet… dun dun dunnnnnnnnn…_

_A/N #5: Daniel Bernhardt was the actor who played Agent Johnson in __Reloaded__ and was in the commercial for Samsung TVs. Agent Thompson, I think, was in the Power Aide commercial, but I could be wrong… XD_

_A/N #6: DISCLAIMER NOTICE: As always, I do not own the __Matrix__ and its characters…it'd be a much scarier place if I did._

_Now let's get busy, y'all!_

* * *

**"Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part V: Evil Interludes: In the Age of Underpaid Extras"**

* * *

Agents Johnson, Thompson, and Jackson sat inside a slow-motion limousine. Inside the armrests of the car laid silent telephones.

Quiet abounded in the Matrix.

Johnson drummed his fingers against the armrest. Thompson checked his earpiece. Jackson polished a random double barrel shotgun just to take advantage of being able to sing "Down Rodeo" by Rage Against the Machine.

There were no calls today.

No calls meant no targets.

No targets meant no fun.

No fun meant dangerous Agents.

"Yeah, I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit' a shotgun, these people ain't seen a brown skin man since their grandparents bought one," Jackson sang.

Johnson took the double barrel shotgun and threw it out the tinted windows, shattering the glass in a torrent of shards. He sat back down and calmly folded his hands in his lap as passerby shrieked in terror with mouthfuls of lead .45 AE.

"No singing," he said.

The trio of Agents stared at one another.

A few minutes later…

"Drink more," Thompson said.

"Oh, blimey!" Johnson shrieked, throwing his hands up in defeat. "For the love of God, Thompson, we've been over this! Power Aide is a sports drink, NOT an interrogation device!"

"Drink more," Thompson apologized, shaking his head in sorrow.

Johnson sniffed indignantly. "Indeed."

"Sir," Jackson said. "How long have we been riding?"

"Approximately three days, two hours, fifty-seven minutes, eighty point two sevenths seconds and three thousand, one hundred and forty-six milliseconds," Johnson said, staring out the broken window. "Why?"

"I do believe this vehicle truly is in slow-motion," Jackson said. "Look."

Johnson looked.

They had gone two centimeters down the street.

Butterflies on Hell's Angels motorcycles flipped him off as they zipped past. Turtles blew out their built-in speaker horns honking at the almost-scientifically-impossible-slow-motion limo. Snails swerved to avoid colliding with the limo and smashed into one another in a small-scale thermonuclear explosion. It took paramedics thirty hours to arrive on the scene. Upon their arrival the snails involved in the accident were lifted on a Mercy Animal hummingbird copter and carried over to the prestigious Pound Puppy ICU, where only twenty years later they died from their extensive injuries.

Johnson sat back in the limo, rolled up the passenger window and screeched the world's loudest decibel WTF.

* * *

Then the trio arrived in the company of another trio we know… Smith, Jones, and Brown.

Three life-size posters of Smith, Jones, and Brown, that is, as I have finally submitted my evil script and the Wachowski Brothers have approved, and now I shall RULE THE REALM OF ORACLES AND ONES AND ZIONS AND AGENTS AND RUBBER DUCKIES AND UNDERGROUND SOCIALIST MAFIAS AND PRETENTIOUS COSTS OF MOVIE TICKETS AND THAT VAGUELY UNKNOWN BRAND OF THE SLIMY STICK OF GENERIC GUM THAT'S SOLIDIFIED UNDER YOUR SEAT AND THAT SNOT-NOSED LITTLE KID THAT KICKS YOUR CHAIR FROM BEHIND SO YOUR HEAD KEEPS HITTING THE SCREEN AND CASTING A PARTICULARLY CRUCIAL OVAL ECLIPSE OVER THE CLIMAX OF THE TWO HOURS AND SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE YOU JUST WASTED BY WATCHING THIS DAMNABLY POINTLESS MOVIE WHEN YOU SHOULD BE OUT PROTESTING THE UTTER SOCIAL INJUSTICE OF WHY MY CAR HAS A $2,000 DOWN DEPOSIT BECAUSE ALLSTATE CAN KISS MY NON-DEDUCTIBLE ACCIDENT-FORGIVING INSURANCE POLICY A—

Beep.

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

Beep.

Sparks has just reestablished the connection. Thanks Sparks!

"No prob," Sparks said, grinning and flashing the camera a thumbs-up before busily crashing the Logos into the Statue of Liberty and ducking Niobe's female wrath.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… OW YOUR NAILS HURT!

The Agents walked along the highway.

"Samsung TVs are sooooo much better than Sony," Johnson said, smiling commercially. "Thus, by deductive reasoning of capitalist media, I am sooooo much better than Smith."

"Drink more?" Thompson inquired.

"No, Thompson."

"Drink more," Thompson agreed, nodding.

Johnson patted him on the head as he swilled another gallon of suspiciously electric-green Power Aide.

Meanwhile, Agents White, Pace and Grey arrived on the scene.

"Oh, look," Johnson said. "It's the upgrade upgrades…which, I just realized, doesn't make any sense right now."

Thompson fell backwards.

"Drink more! DRINK MORE!"

His voice rose in alarm as he pointed to Pace.

Johnson looked once at Pace, then to something forming strangely at Thompson's…lower abdomen…

Johnson sacked it with a carton full of Idaho red potatoes. Unfortunately, Thompson had just gotten his annual booster shot for that particular strain of Idaho-red-potato-itis and was immune to the resulting subduing effects.

"Oh God oh God oh God," Johnson hyperventilated. "Agent White will _have us all deleted if he sees this!_"

Agent White, the leading stand-in for Smith during Smith's summer ice fishing vacations at the North Pole—

"What? Like you don't go on vacations too, you liar," Smith said, gathering up an array of harpoons and fishing poles. With a tilt of his hat he grunted a command to Jones and Brown, who scurried behind him and rolled him down the hill with the sheer weight of his fifty-seven bear fur parkas. "Mush, you fools! MUSH!"

—approached the trio, oblivious to Thompson's current condition. He nodded in greeting as he advanced towards them, extending a solid arm to his fellow Agents.

Thompson wailed. Jackson sang uneasily to Cypress Hill. Johnson ran around in circles.

"What? What? What? Are you turning human?" the dark-haired Agent screamed, clapping his hands over his face. "Oh God, we're all gonna dieeeeeeee!"

* * *

Meanwhile, Daniel Bernhardt was busy sipping on a citrus mojito in a sunny plaza in Madrid when his cell phone rang.

"Hello?" he said. After listening for a few minutes and picking at his teeth with the yellow plastic umbrella he closed the cell phone. "Huh. So the Samsung fucker's finally lost it… okay. I'll be there ASAP."

He rose from the table.

"Where are you going?" his confused friends shrilled…in French, oddly enough.

Daniel's face grew dark and his voice edged with danger.

"I ordered a lemon citrus mango twist with exactly _two_ drops of lime," he growled. "They gave me _three point five…_now Bernhardt's got some lemon-sucking fuckers to deal with."

His friends wept in Mandarin Chinese as he left the Spanish plaza.

* * *

White did not delete Thompson upon witnessing his condition. He was strangely magnanimous, offering, instead, his services to fix the glitch.

"Drink more?" Thompson asked nervously. He lay suspended in space, tied like a hostage to a rooftop radio station receiver.

"What…what is that?" Johnson said, straining to see over White's work. He extended his hand to contact the code of the glitch.

"Don't touch," Grey said, slapping away Johnson's hand. "It's dangerous."

White pulled out an enlightening-looking book from his back pocket and began reading its contents.

"This, my sirs, is what humans commonly refer to as _erection_," he said. "Other names for this physiological phenomenon: Boner. Stick in the mud. Spear. Cannon. Rocket. Pole. Sucks to be me dancing in the club right now. What do you think it means, baby? No, I don't want to talk. Don't be afraid of it. I'm just happy to see you."

"Where did you obtain that book?" Johnson asked.

"That is classified information, Johnson," White said, tossing Justin Bieber's fourth grade diary away in the nearest dump. "Such fact cannot be compromised. It cannot be dispersed easily as does the government."

"Well, what do we do now?" Johnson said. "Do we operate?"

"The remedy, my sir," White explained, cracking his knuckles, "is a simple dose of this."

A fist connected with Thompson's lower abdomen, sending him soaring backwards through the air and crashing through the city's neon Power Aide billboard, cutting off the power lines in half of Sydney, Australia and causing a massive worldwide systematic breakdown of wild kangaroos, which sputtered and shot out brilliant blue sparks from their pouches.

In the distance a bush rustled.

"They're on to us, Charlie," Crocodile Dundee shouted to his partner. "But they'll never obtain our secret plans for the emus! Go! Go! Go! GO!"

Charlie's Jeep dissolved in the horizon, along with a crate of bouncing emu heads and a resounding chorus of maniacal cyborg laughter.

* * *

The five Agents hovered over Thompson's limp form, standing still in the morning city wind that blew through the gaping hole of the Power Aide billboard.

"Ah, he's coming to," someone said.

"¡_Para español, oprima número dos_!" Pace squealed in relief.

Everyone stared at her.

"Isn't she Italian?" Jackson asked.

"Yes," Grey said, swinging his legs over the edge.

Pace walked over to White as he stared dramatically at the highway and embraced him from behind.

"She switches languages every Saturday morning," White said. He shrugged. "I think it's quite cute, actually."

"_Sí, Blanco, anoche me prometiste tu amor,"_ Pace giggled, flashing a grossly giant diamond ring whose gem smacked Jackson in the face with its utter girliness.

"Drink more," Thompson said sorrowfully, having missed his only chance at true love. With a wistful step he gracefully plunged the fifty feet from the smoking ruins of the neon billboard, caused a slight shift in the space-time continuum, picked himself up and sauntered back to the car still riding down the two centimeters of Adams Street. "Drink more…"

Johnson imagined stabbing himself in the eye with a mace to escape the utter absurdity of this story, but realized he only had a standard Agent copy of Justin Bieber's fourth grade diary on his person.

"Meh, it'll have to do," he said, stabbing himself with the soft blunt Styrofoam edges.

* * *

Since Jackson insisted upon finding Thompson, Johnson followed along. They walked along the city side, scanning the code for the unmistakable sign of a despondently lovelorn Agent.

They went inside a bar whose sign read "Despondently Lovelorn Agent Inside."

Johnson glowered, crossing his arms.

The sign shrugged and walked across the street, morphing into a "Yield".

The two Agents walked into the bar, approaching the counter. Thompson, alarmed, whirled around with a beer in his hand.

"Drink more!" Thompson beamed, pushing the beer to his cohorts.

"Oh," said Johnson. "So _that's_ what he meant."

* * *

A few hours later Daniel arrived at the bar, dripping with the heavy gore of many citrus casualties. He panted; his eyes were wild with rage and glazed red in burning lemon acid.

"Agent Johnson! It is I," Daniel said in doomsday voice.

Johnson lifted an eyebrow. "Who, now?"

"Your _soul_, Johnson," Daniel declared. "Your poisonous lemony-citrus _soul…_"

Johnson rolled his eyes and went flying through the open bar.

"I'M THE MOST UNDERPAID EXTRA IN HOLLYWOOD, BITCH!" Daniel screamed. "ALL BECAUSE OF YOU! YOU AND YOUR BLANDNESS! GOD, EVEN SMITH SOUNDS A LITTLE BIT LIKE CARL SAGAN, BUT YOU! YOU'RE JUST FLAT-FUCK BLAND! BLAND LIKE TOFU!"

"I like tofu," Jackson offered sheepishly.

"Oh," Johnson said, "it's _on_."

"¡_Espera!_" Agent Pace shrieked, running to shield Thompson from the fight.

Everyone in the bar stared at her as she offered a full-winded speech, in Spanish—one of many languages in which I am too lazy to depict in the proper dialogue, since laziness knows no cultural bounds—about how she never loved Agent White, but the idea of love, and how she had always loved, instead, Agent Thompson, to whom she felt a true connection because of their similarities in peculiar speaking choices, and how, just as she knew he always loved her, she knew in her deepest heart of hearts she had always loved him and would continue to do so until the end of time…Alas, she was to wed White by the break of the first spring dawn, warm and anew…but it would be a day of darkness for her, bound forever without the embrace of her one true love.

Daniel sniffed. Agents, actors and patrons alike started clapping. The bar immediately erupted into a fanfare of joy.

Pace tore off her engagement ring and kissed Thompson.

Thompson blinked.

"Can anyone tell me what the hell she just said?" he said.

* * *

THA END

_Stay tuned for Pointless Agent Insanity! Part VI: THE UNDERGROUND SOCIALIST MAFIA!_


	8. THE UNDERGROUND SOCIALIST MAFIA!

_A/N #1.) Hey y'all, whazzups! Sorry about the slow updates, guys, I've been ultra busy lately, what with all the comic drawing, fruitless scholarship searches, and general despair about all the prestigious colleges that will use my poor GPA ass as their whipping post…also add to the mix the fact that I just found my long-lost flash-drive, and you have some cawazay shit goin' on here, y'all!_

_A/N #2.) IT'S COOKIE AND DEDICATION TIME! YAY COOKIE AND DEDICATION TIME!_

_A/N #3.) Genius 626—COOKIES TO YOU! HOORAY FOR FIRST TIMERS!_

_Raionne—for all the epicness, COOKIES TO YOU!_

_DocterM—well, no, that wasn't the actual electric bill, but COOKIES TO YOU ANYWAY!_

_CeruleanPhoenix7—my partner in crime robbing the bank last week, hehehehehe…COOKIES TO YOU! And also, this chappie's dedicated to YOU!_

_A/N #4.) FREE COOKIES TO ALL REVIEWERS! I'M WHIPPING THE ORACLE INTO OVERTIME, WHOO MAKE MORE O' THAT CHOCO-GOODNESS MRS. BUTTERWORTH, MAKE MORE!_

_Ahem… now… moving along…  
_

* * *

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part VI: THE UNDERGROUND SOCIALIST MAFIA!"**

* * *

"Okay," Thomas said. "So we agree… this is the last time we try to take over the world's supply of soap suds."

The Agents nodded, looking uneasily below them.

Thomas and the trio of Agents were tied to a slowly rotating bough, underneath which sat a large cauldron, boiling over with scalding hot water flavored with a few traces of last Saturday's cheese pizza crust thrown in… yum yum.

"Oy," Smith said, lifting an eyebrow as he rotated again, "this story is only getting weirder and weirder…"

Just as he made this statement, three ghastly black robed figures rose out of the ashes that surrounded the cauldron, chanting ominously as they glided through the smoke and haze.

"Double, double, toil and trouble," they sang. "Fire burn and cauldron bubble…"

As they advanced, the chanting ceased; the figures stopped abruptly.

"What the hell?" the tallest one screamed, smacking the other two upside the head. "Don't you two remember any of your lines?"

"No," said the other two sorrowfully.

"Ugh. I knew we shouldn't have done Macbeth," the tall figure said, crossing its ghastly arms of ghastly doom and pouting, um, ghastily. "Personally, I would have rather done _Othello_ or _Antony and Cleopatra_, but my wife was all, 'Ooh! I wanna be Lady Macbeth! I always knew I had her proud spirit in me la-dee-dah-dee-doo-dee-dah!' So naturally I says OK even though the woman can't act her way out of a paper bag! Everybody knows that Lady Macbeth doesn't have two android arm cannons capable of vaporizing Macbeth's head off!" One of the figures leaned in and whispered in his ear. "Oh!" he shrieked, throwing up his ghastly arms in defeat. "Then why is the freaking play called _Macbeth_?"

The other figures shrugged as their leader threw off his robes, revealing a very Jersey Shore looking outfit underneath.

"Fuck this Shakespeare shit, bitches," he said. "Let's go get drunk and moo at walls for no apparent reason."

He whistled for a taxi and, whooping in sudden joy, the three figures drove off on a flying cow into the depths of the Jersey sunset.

* * *

Just as my audience collectively went to the hospital wondering if I overdosed on Malaysian seaweed again, the quartet sat around the cauldron, already bored from their unexplained encounter with Pauly D cleverly disguised as a murderous play character.

Jones and Brown squatted on two large rocks, staring out into the sunset while Smith paced back and forth and Thomas jumped into the cauldron to make a steamy broth which he called his famous "Tommy Stew."

"Hmm," said Thomas, tasting the stale water dripping from his body, "I think this could use a little Mr. Rhineheart seasoning."

Thomas pulled out his boss from his back pocket and sprinkled a few of his gray hairs into the brew. He then put Mr. Rhineheart back into his pocket and sat on his pocket so he couldn't escape and bitch at him about all the LOLKITTEYS and evil sunglassed smiley faces he had put on Monday morning's spreadsheets.

"Another point for Anderson, yeah!" Thomas said, pressing all of his weight down on his back pocket. Smiling blissfully, a couple of warm bubbles rose up out of the quiet water of the cauldron…if you know what I mean. "Take that, Mr. Boss Man!"

Mr. Rhineheart grunted in compressed wallet defeat.

"How? How? How? It was so brilliant! Too brilliant! How, God, how? How did it all go wrong?" Smith wailed, banging his head very existentially aginst the nearest tree as a frowning Agent Brown looked up at him.

"You really want to know what happened? Fine. I'll tell you what happened," Brown said.

* * *

A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO

* * *

Agent Brown, under the elaborate, covert guise of "cracka-ass white rapper," marched into the mall to bravely scope out enemy lines.

When he walked into the store, he witnessed in its entirety the belly of the beast…Men dug trenches and wore gas masks to escape the horrors of cinnamon-white-flower-sandalwood-orange-apple-coco nut-strawberry feminine perfumes, the gas of which saturated the air with heavy, oppressive clouds, thundering with seas of Candy Land bubblegum earrings and hailing torrents of Marie Claire lemonade lip gloss. Men were bloodied with lacerations of smoky beige eyeshadow that accented their mortal wounds of burgundy lipstick, blotting the field of combat with the pathetic sight of infantry units scattered across the store, their cries drowning in the enemy's perpetual shrill of "OMG. O.M.G. OMG! This one will look _gorgeous _on you!"

Brown stared, looking on with glassed eyes the utter horror. In an instant he knew his life's purpose—the ultimate mission that was to be accomplished.

Picking up the cash register speaker phone, he spoke nine words.

Nine words. Nine words had sealed all of their fates... forever.

"There is a lipstick stain on your teeth," Brown announced on the speaker, promptly walking out of Woolworth's. Since he knew that there would be some picky government official actually counting his words on an intercepted frequency, he walked back to the cash register, and, clearing his throat very appropriately, he burped his name, at oscillating sonar frequency, into the store speakers to ensure the aforementioned total count of nine words, thus killing two birds with one stone: disbanding the innumerable hordes of bloodthirsty plot-loop-nit-picks while effectively driving the government radio interceptors away.

But by then it was too late.

* * *

"Ah," said Smith, clasping his chin and nodding empathetically, "so THAT'S why you look like Vanna White right now."

Brown stood up suddenly, his stomach-length pink sequin tank top hitting Jones square in the face with its graphic Ed Hardiness. "I am NOT Vanna White! I'm Hannah Montana as an alcoholic former child star!" He put his hands on his hips, but as he did, two purple silicon breast implants fell out of the tank top. "NO! NOT MY LAVENDER SMOOTH PRETTYS!" he shrieked, dropping to the ground as he chased the two purple beach balls down the hill. "COME BACK MY LOVES! PART US NOT, PART US NOT," he shrilled, his indigo mascara running wet lines down his cheeks. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, COME BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!"

"How come it's me who actually disguises himself as a woman, yet Brown gets to wear all the pretty clothes?" Jones sulked, pouting. "This sucks mucho grande ass."

"Um," said Smith, backing away from his cohorts. "I think I'm gonna go cower in that random corner over there and pretend not to hock a noogey thinking about that image."

* * *

TWO MINUTES LATER

* * *

It was a little rainy that afternoon, so Thomas and the Agents went back to his apartment to formulate another brilliant plan watching _Jersey Shore_ on TV.

Minutes later Morpheus busted in, along with the waiting rebels.

"Hello, Neo, I have been waiting for you," Morpheus said. "Well, no, not really, I've just been stalking you and your workplace for five months while you didn't even know I was alive, but please disregard the contents of the aforementioned statement and come with me to an abandoned hotel in the dumpiest part of the city late at night where you'll take a powerful drug and be launched into a whole cyber world where you become Superman and must save the world from a whole bunch of American black-suited badasses and meet a truckload of annoying stereotypes along the way... oops."

"Um, hi, ever hear of knocking?" Thomas said, lifting an eyebrow. "Go outside and knock."

Morpheus grumbled and closed the door as Thomas rearranged his pile of Beastie Boys CDs. "No sleep till Brooklyn!" the program shrilled, pulling a shoulder muscle suddenly executing a full windmill air guitar move. "OWWW FUCK THIS HOT YET STRANGELY THIRTY-FIVE YEAR-OLD BODY!" he screamed, swiveling around in the computer chair while clutching his shoulder.

"I have a night class degree in chiropracting!" Morpheus chirped from behind the door.

Thomas stared at the door, then at the Agents whom were rendered inert by their mortal enemy, the TV, then at his shoulder, then at Morpheus, who scattered his atoms and materialized into the room at will.

He stared at him.

"Fine," Thomas said.

* * *

MEANWHILE, ON JERSEY SHORE 

* * *

Snooki sat on the couch, impatiently waiting for Pauly D to come home.

Moments later a rustle sounded, along with a low bellow, as a shadow opened the front door.

Snooki flipped on the light switch and saw Pauly gallop in the living room riding on a dairy cow.

"Heyyyyyyyyyyy, Snooks, whazzup!" Pauly shrilled drunkenly.

"Don't you 'whazzup' me, Pauly! Have you been mooing at walls again?" Snooki shrieked, waving a DUI notice in front of Pauly's face. "God, I can't keep bailing you out like this! I gotta save some money to pay off the manicure bills! These nail diamond-encrusted studs don't pay for themselves, you know!"

"Hey, back off, 'aight, Snooks? I'm home, I mean, Bessie drove me home, ain't that right, Bessie?" Pauly said, petting the mooing cow's muzzle affectionately.

Snooki stared at the cow, which blew a straw of hay at her.

"Oh, it's on like Donkey Kong, bitch," Snooki said, jumping atop Bessie the cow and wrestling into a ball onto a random puddle of mud, punching the cow stiff in the face with fists of Jersey rage.

"Yeah, Snooks! Work dat hussy!" slurred Pauly, taking off his shirt and waving it as a banner in the black midnight sky as he collapsed shirtless into the hottub and slipped down the drain into the Atlantic Ocean.

"Ha ha, Snooks doesn't like cows," Smith laughed.

* * *

MEANWHILE 

* * *

"Whoa," Thomas said, blinking as the Agents watched the TV.

"Yes, Neo," Morpheus said, half-smiling in agreement... with himself. "Yes, Morpheus... yes."

Sighing, Thomas looked up; the black guy with the John Lennon sunglasses was still talking to him.

"Everything that is wrong with the world can be traced back to one source: the capitalists," Morpheus said, his voice dark with solemnity.

"Whoa," replied Thomas.

"You see, Marx predicted that the communist revolution would emerge in an industrialized, developed nation. But it really started in Russia, an agrarian society which was running on empty from the heavy financial, societal, and emotional losses from its participation in World War I, as well as those borne of incessant civil unrest. The basis of Marx's thought has roots in time periods before the Bolshevik Revolution, and Socialists existed in the US even by the time of the Haymarket Riot in 1868. However, it is still thought today that Socialist philosophy is the root cause of all political tumult, when in actuality these may be assigned to extensions of anarchist, syndicatist, fascist or even Western democratic trains of thought. When the Schenck case ruling of 'clear and present danger' was passed by the US Supreme Court (subsequently placing limits on First Amendment rights during wartime, I might add), many assumed it was Schenck's Socialist affiliation that led him to his radical spurs of draft dodging, however few this following became because of widespread 'total war effort' sentiment—"

"Whoa," Thomas drooled, as did I, forgetting what I was going on and on about Socialists for.

Morpheus sighed.

"We are the most undermined, underpaid, and underestimated political party, Neo. We are a brotherhood of equality and equanimity, yet we are among the most persecuted of parties. We, Neo, _we_ are the underground socialist mafia," Morpheus said as a dramatic thunderbolt appeared and hit some poor jaywalker crossing the rainy street down below.

"Whoa," Thomas said.

"Are you listening to me, Neo? Or are you just saying 'whoa' to be a Ted Preston jackass?" Morpheus asked. "As you know, I am a_ very_ busy man."

"_Busy_ meaning he gets stoned and makes prank calls to Switzerland asking where the hell all of their cheese mines are," Mouse said, twirling one of Thomas' Beastie Boys CDs in his hands.

Morpheus whirled around and blew off Mouse's head with an ICBM. The other rebels rushed over to his corpse, not because he was dead, but because he was dead and they wanted to catch his deadness.

"Damn it," Trinity said. "We missed it."

"Yeah, we can't even get Agents to kill us for us anymore," Switch said sorrowfully, remembering something...

* * *

LAST FRIDAY NIGHT 

* * *

Agents Jackson, Thompson, Johnson, White, Grey, Pace, Jones, Brown, and Smith all sat around a busy green poker table at the local casino.

Switch danced in front of them, waving her arms before each one...alas, none responded, transfixed by the stimulating exchange of cards, chips, drinks, and cigars.

"Oh, look at me! I'm running away now! Look at me! Look at me, lalala, I'm running awayyyy! Look at me!" she sang. "LOOK AT ME GODDAMMIT! KILL ME ALREADY WILLYA YA MOTHAFUCKING BUNCH OF METAL RUBIX CUBES!"

No response.

She snatched up Agent Johnson's Desert Eagle, slipping it away from his grip. "Excuse me, I'mma just borrow this a minute," she said sweetly.

"Nuh-uh, no touchie, Cypher," Agent Johnson said, busy glowering at Thompson who was using his super X-ray vision, empowered by the mass consumption of green Power Aide, to look at Johnson's cards as well as what was underneath Pace's silk blouse... A tattoo of the Periodic Table of Elements. "Hmmm, very interesting," Thompson said. "It seems to me that you have a royal flush, Johnson... and yes, Pace, plutonium-239 is _very_ interesting indeed... hehehehehe."

Then, all of a sudden...

"AGGGGGGGH GOD I'M BLIND!" Thompson screamed, running out the door. "DRINK MORE! DRINK MORE!"

Johnson grinned evilly, flipping his iPhone picture of Charlie Sheen out from underneath the table.

Switch jumped atop the table, kicking away the poker chips and cards and dancing wildly with a marching band that had the phrase 'SHE'S A ZIONITE GOING TO STEAL ALL OF YOUR PRECIOUS FUEL IF YOU LET HER LIVE ANOTHER MINUTE' plastered in glowing blue neon letters which rotated in front of the circle of Agents.

"Meh," said Johnson, chewing on a Cuban cigar as he flipped his royal flush. "If we run out we'll just buy some Five Hour Energy Shots at the local gas station."

Switch fell off the poker table as Smith announced another Go Fish.

* * *

Just as Thomas' head was going to explode along with his aching shoulder, Niobe arrived, diverting Morpheus' attention away from Socialists for a moment.

"Morpheus! Come here!" she beckoned.

"Yes, my dea—wif—partne—soul ma—spou—lov—old flame who does someone else now—Niob—Jada Pinkett Smith," Morpheus stammered. He threw up his hands as she approached him. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"Morpheus! I told you, you will always refer to me as 'Princess I-Am-Sassy-Ass-Sparkle-Bitch-But-I'm-Cute-Therefor e-It-Doesn't-Matter-So-Go-And-Make-Me-A-Taco-My-Ma n-Slave,'" Niobe said, smacking Morpheus upside the head. "And where is my taco you jackoff?" she shrieked. "Hot damn can't you read fanfics, son?"

"I told you, Apoc says there are no tacos left," Morpheus said, rubbing at the back of his head.

Niobe glared at Apoc, who shrugged.

"That doesn't mean you're relieved of your duties, Morpheus," she said, folding her arms dangerously. Stepping in closer, she stared at Morpheus, who stared at Thomas, who stared at the Agents, who stared at me staring at you staring at the computer screen staring at the UNIVERSE STARING AT… UM… GEORGE CLOONEY, WHO ISH THE SOURCE OF ALL CINEMATIC COOLNESS.

"Damn straight," George Clooney said, glaring at his other two contenders for the title: Sean Connery and Russell Crowe.

Then, tired of being stared at by George Clooney for five hours straight, Russell Crowe got up and kicked him down into a random everlasting abyss that manifested itself somewhere on the east side of Detroit.

Russell Crowe looked up, his arms raised in victory, and, since I can't officially use movie lines in fanfiction, Russell Crowe shouted thus: "THIS. IS. FARTAAAAAA!"

Russell Crowe then farted in Sean Connery's face, who blinked and subsequently got shot with a metal crossbow by a random evil knight dude who just happened to trot by on his Shetland Pony. Sean Connery blinked again, flipping off the other two actors and also Richard Gere as he fell.

"Lancelot becomes king of Camelot my Scottish ash!" Sean Connery shrieked with his last few dying breaths. "King Arthur all the way whoooo—"

And just as he made this particular "whoo" he died of his crossbow injuries, leaving only Russell Crowe sitting in a random tree staring pensively out of an arrowhead for the next emo-ass Robin Hood movie. The End.

* * *

Morpheus blinked, looking casually at his red plastic Mickey Mouse wristwatch.

"You're on now," a camera operator whispered.

"Oh, uh, yeah, a .38 fragment, I think it should be left to ballistics," Morpheus said.

Frantically, the camera operator signaled a slit throat.

"Oh... OH. Matrix. Morpheus. OK. Gotcha," Morpheus said. "Dr. Langston has left the building."

The camera operator flashed an uneasy thumbs up, now worrying if Morpheus was going to strip down to his whitey-tidey undies and choke a random teenage girl as Othello.

Very romantically, Morpheus kneeled to the ground before Niobe, producing a black velvet box from his back pocket. "Well, I was gonna do this on Tuesday, but then I realized I would miss the Packers-Redskins football game," he said. "So I'm doing it now."

Niobe opened the box. Her eyes grew moist and wide at the contents inside.

"Will you do me the honor…?" Morpheus asked, his head humbly lifted up.

Niobe dropped the black velvet box on the ground and embraced Morpheus. Her frame quivered as she wept with ecstatic shock.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! I will!" she shrieked.

"Whoa," said Thomas. "Keep your lovey-dovey stuff outta my apartment, dude, alright?"

He ushered everyone but Trinity out into the hallway, slamming the door with a definite bang.

The Agents shook their heads, having been largely absent from this story. They quickly detected Morpheus' status change on Facebook even before Morpheus knew what the hell Facebook was.

"Awwwwwww," they said collectively. "Congratulations on your engagement!"

Looking up, Morpheus lifted an eyebrow.

"What? No, God no," he said. "We're opening up our own taco stand!"

Curious, Smith picked up the black velvet box which laid on the floor and shook it.

A taco fell out.

"Ay carumba," he said, dropping to the ground and having a sudden stroke from all of these taco references.

* * *

THA END

_HEY Y'ALL! STAY TUNED FOR MORE POINTLESS AGENT INSANITY!_


	9. National Human Day

_A/N: Hey all! Free cookies to all __Pointless Agent Insanity!__ reviewers are still up and open, as well as chappie dedications!_

_CeruleanPhoenix7: Hey there, no problem! And yes, we must rob the cookie bank some day. Chocolate chip or peanut butter? xD_

_Genius626: I'm glad I made your day. Speaking of making days, today's your lucky day-this one's for YOU!_

_Finally, peace and good will to all... AND COOKIES!_

* * *

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part VII: National Human Day"**

* * *

"You won't do it," Smith taunted. "You can't."

"I will," Brown said. "I shall."

"No one has ever succeeded in this endeavor. I don't believe anyone can," Smith said, his pensive blue gaze drawn tight and focused in thought.

Jones stared silently.

"Quack?"

Agents Smith, Jones, and Brown sat around a table in the kitchen. In Jones' lap quacked a puffy cheese-colored baby duck, which blinked its barely newborn eyes and innocently sniffed around its new owners.

"I bet you can't do it," Smith said, lifting his head from his folded arms. "I bet you'll duck out the first chance you get."

"Quack?" the baby butterball duck asked, its head raised curiously.

"I shall do no such thing," Brown said, indignantly petting his pet duck, aptly named Sure-Shits-a-lot. "And he didn't mean that, Sure-Shits-a-Lot, he's just kidding."

"Sure-Shits-a-Lot just shit on me, Agent Brown. I think you need a cleaner, more eco-friendly pet," Jones said, lifting the duck out of his lap and throwing it across the continent to Siberia, where, upon landing, it learned Cyrillic and became the world's first talking yellow penguin. "This one's gas emissions are not carbon-friendly."

Smith tapped his fingers on the table. "Seriously? Did you just make a hippie-ass Earth Day fart joke?"

"Yeppers," Jones beamed, growing more insane in unprecedented Agent exponents.

Smith sighed melodramatically.

"You do know what tomorrow is, don't you?" he said, glancing at the plastic clock bolstered to the kitchen wall. Outside, the sun dipped below the city horizon; his face grew slightly dark with faint traces of worry.

"My comrades," Smith said, head bowed low.

Jones and Brown looked at one another, the heavy burdens of truth descending with the bright city sun.

They knew. They knew.

"I fear we've run out of time," Smith said, flipping off the light for the evening before walking into the spare bedroom. "And when that end of time comes… then we must fight to live."

* * *

It was tomorrow.

It was Tuesday, August 17th, the national Agent holiday called "National Human Day," made the national Agent holiday in the Matrix because there were no other holidays in August and 17 was a number of random but revered mathematical magnificence to the Agents. Played by all Agents on National Human Day, it was the most cherished game among many generations of Agents, and also the most arduous: no Agent has ever won the game. None have ever attempted total victory, and those who attempted faced certain deletion…thus victory became the impossible dream.

Oh, and rules. There were rules... but of course.

…Rules and death. August 17th was also the scheduled day of the Architect's temporal reset, in which all of the Matrix and Zion were destroyed and all existence would begin again. Winning the impossible game would mean favor in the Architect's eyes; winning the game meant a glimmering chance of preservation as a means of salvation and, if one is so audacious as to consider it, extended life…

Rules: All Agents of the Matrix must go through Tuesday, August 17th in an absolutely normal human fashion. Ones whom do not comply with the rules and regulations, forfeit early, or fail the demands of the game exactly as they are instituted will be drafted back to the Source for potential deletion…

No randomness. No insanity. No fun. No Agent hijinks. Just pure, normal, boring, monotonous human routine for a full twenty-four hours.

In other words:

Hell.

* * *

"Good morning," Smith said, getting up out of bed at exactly 12:00 A.M. to begin the deadly game.

Quietly, he got up from the bed and went to the bathroom.

He stopped.

"Um," he said, staring at the strange curvy white thing before him.

_OK, human, human, human, remember to be human…what do humans do at this time in the morning in the bathing facilities? Come on, Smith, use your brilliant deductive reasoning…we shall think this through. We shall overcome, _he thought.

Just as he stuck a toe in the toilet bowl, an alarm went off, flashing a Microsoft error message in front of him: ABNORMAL. ABNORMAL. ATTEMPT TO FLUSH ONESELF DOWN A SEWER SYSTEM. DOES NOT CONFORM TO NORMAL HUMAN BEHAVIOR. ABNORMAL. ABNORMAL. NOW REPORTING…

"Uh, no, no, no, you got it all wrong here," Smith protested, flailing his arms. "Um… my septic tank was backing up out of this apparatus here, and I tried to reach for the plunger in that closet, but I was too short, and, being the clumsy Neanderthal that I am, my foot slipped into the bowl. See? It's out now, silly me. Hehehehe… gross, eh?" he said, quickly drawing his toe out of the water and wrapping it in a towel.

Considering this for a moment, the error message aborted the download and vanished into thin air.

"Whew," said Smith. "This is even harder than that time I had to tap-dance on the North Vietnamese border with a giant sign that read 'Nationalist Greetings from Ho Chi Minh' and dodge five-hundred and eighty-seven short-range 'welcome mats'."

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

For Jones, surviving the National Human Day game was going to be easy. All he had to do was keep working at the noodle shop as the waitress Alice until he got home, safe and sound, in his own abode of insanity, where not even the Matrix could touch him…

Dressed in a blue apron, beehive platinum blonde wig, eleven inch steel stilettos, fake sparkle eyelashes and heavy charcoal mascara, he trotted off to the front register. He was chewing an entire stick of bubble gum with a misty cigarette hanging off the other end of this mouth while checking out the new manicure of his four-foot long pink lacquer nails.

At one-thirty in the morning a bunch of customers walked into the noodle shop.

"Hello, my name is Alice. How may I serve you today?" Jones shrilled in perfect Gwen Stefani soprano.

The head of the bunch of customers was an ominous-looking man, dressed in a sleek black suit and wearing a silver ring on his left hand.

"_Oui, oui,_ _mademoiselle_," he said. "My name is the Merovin—Marvin, and I would like a, how you say, table, no?" the man asked, grinning evilly at his cohorts.

"What the hell you say, Frenchie?" Jones chewed, spitting out his cigarette butt into the Pepsi dispenser.

"_S'il vous plaît_," the Merovin—er, Marvin pleaded politely, his hands clasped lightly together. "My friends and I would like to be seated, if you do not mind. _Merci_."

"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Paris Hilton?" Jones said.

"Paris Hilton! _Je méprise la prostituée! Ce quémandeur vole tout l'argent de sa famille! Si vous comprenez vraiment tout cela, vous étudiez sans doute le français et cela vous fait un idiot, parce que l'espagnol est la façon d'aller, vous les chiennes Québécoises,_" the furious Merov—Marvin shrieked. He banged his fists on the counter. "Paris Hilton ruins the blessed name of my home city! Now, _mon cherie_, I demand that me and my entourage are shown our seats immediately to have a nice time of dining while formulating our evil plan to bomb the city, or else dire consequences will follow!"

Jones stared at them.

"Look, Jacques Cousteau, I ain't got no twenty thousand leagues under the sea, alright? So you go now and take your lil' French oui-oui Pepe-le-Pew Eiffel Tower asses and go blow it out learning some real American language, bitch," Jones shrilled, turning the other way. "Hey, Felix! _Echa un vistazo a esta puta que se rodó en la ciudad en un Pontiac Sunfire! ¡Qué jackoff!"_

"_Oye, Alice, lo veo aquí! Jajaja Pontiac Sunfire, lo que es un idiota, ¿eh? Apuesto a que ni siuquiera se puede parar en una estación de servivio sin ser detenido por obstrucción de carreteras," _Felix shrieked from behind the kitchen door.

"_Ja, ich glaube nicht, er kann sogar fahren zwei Meilen mit dem Ding," _Jones stated.

"_Tú me arrastan hacia fuera cuando hablas alemán con una voz gutural masculina. Te amo," _Felix sighed.

"_Lo sé, mi corazón, lo sé…Hey! Dove sono finite tutti gli spaghetti dannata andare!" _said Jones, pointing a horrified finger to the perpetrator whilst effectively spearing Felix in the face with a quivering pink nail.

* * *

ENGLISH TRANSLATION TO ALL OF THE LANGUAGES ABOVE, FOR ALL OF YOU CURRENTLY NOT STUDYING A LANGUAGE *KOFFKOFF_**YOUDAMNHONKIES**_KOFFKOFF*:

MARVIN: (_**in French**_) Paris Hilton! I despise the whore! That freeloader steals all of her family's money! If you're actually understanding all of this, then you're probably studying French, and that makes you an idiot, because Spanish is the way to go, you Quebec bitches.

JONES: (_**in Spanish**_) Hey, Felix! Check out this bitch who rolled into town in a Pontiac Sunfire! What a jackoff!

FELIX: (_**in Spanish**_) Hey, Alice, I see him here! Hahaha Pontiac Sunfire, what a jerk, eh? I bet he can't even stop at a gas station without being pulled over for road obstruction.

JONES: (_**in German**_) Yeah, I don't think he can even go two miles on that thing.

FELIX: (_**in Spanish**_) You creep me out when you speak German in a male guttural voice. I love you.

JONES: (_**in Spanish**_) I know, my heart, I know... (_**then, in sudden Italian, just because I feel like it**_) Hey! Where did all the goddamn noodles go!

* * *

MEANWHILE, IN A LESS RACIALLY PROFILING PART OF TOWN

* * *

Brown sat on the subway, pouting. He was still sore from the sudden loss of Sure-Shits-a-Lot.

"I miss Sure-Shits-a-Lot. Why did stupid Jones have to go and do that to me? I wanna go home. I don't even want to play this stupid ga—OOMPH!" he shrieked as a strong hand clamped down over his mouth and pulled him out of the train car.

"Hey, hey! Heresy! Heresy! They'll hear you! You gotta death wish, kid?" the Agent who grabbed him whispered fiercely.

"And who are you again…?" Brown said, glancing over the unfamiliar Agent.

"I'm Agent, uh, Agent Johnson! Yeah that's right, Agent Johnson," the unknown Agent said, staring off into space nervously.

"Agent Johnson is over there," Brown said, pointing to Agent Johnson standing with a brown briefcase on the platform. "Who are you?"

"Uh, uh, gimme all your money before I shoot?" the strange man asked.

Agent Brown lifted an eyebrow.

"Are you a country-star hobo? I told you people already, I have no spare change for beer," he said, bored.

"Oh SHIT," Toby Keith said with eyes wide, his cover being blown. He ran out of the train station, wearing nothing but a black cowboy hat and a '70s shirt that read 'BUY MORE BILLY BEER'. "We're in the soup now, Willie!"

"So wait, we're not going to gas the place with our terrible duo?" a heavily armed Willie Nelson asked as Toby Keith leap-frogged over him half-naked. "Aw, man... but I really wanted to unleash my long singing country braids of doom upon the rap heathens," he sighed.

* * *

FIFTEEN HOURS AND SEVEN MINUTES TO GO…AND NO, STOP THAT DAMN _**24**_ CLOCK BEFORE I SHOOT THE WRITERS IN A LAME SLO-MO STUPOR

* * *

…

Smith paced the floor as his collection of "busy" CDs played in a continuous loop.

"Insane in the membrane, insane in da brain!" Cypress Hill wailed.

"Wait," said Smith. "Switch!"

He pulled out the Cypress Hill CD and put in the Sugar Ray one. He resumed pacing the floor via stopping, dropping and rolling in various "fire safety" positions—but it was really Sonic the Hedgehog style, y'all.

On one such Spin Dash he accidentally rolled through his neighbor's wall, collapsing the roof rafters in on some poor girl named Desdemona who just happened to walk in at that exact moment because that was the original way she died in _Othello_, y'all.

Smith looked up, then got up slowly, anxiety misting his face. He stared at the rafters, then at the neighbors, then screamed... _Scream_ style, y'all.

* * *

TEN HOURS AND NINETEEN MINUTES TO GO

* * *

"Get dat bitch, Felix! Whack him good!" Jones shrieked, taking off one of his steel stilettos and whacking the Meroving—Marvin in the head with it.

"Ow!" said Mervie—Marvie, who was tied to a plastic box of microwavable Thai peanut noodles with a thin piece of rotting yarn. "Don't just stand there, you fools! GET THEM!" he ordered, thrashing around wildly to escape his inescapable bonds.

"Sorry boss, coffee break," his unnamed henchmen said simultaneously.

Marvin swore darkly in unspecified French, rolling as Smith did in his aforementioned segment, Sonic the Hedgehog style, down the hill to the chateau, since rolling was a major mode of transportation in the Matrix and became the biggest phenomenon since vague philosophy terms and bullet-time… Hot damn, I only thought they teleported everywhere. Hang on, I gotta check the script, I'll be right back... yep! It's confirmed. Rolling around Sonic the Hedgehog style is a bigger fad than fist-pumping to Italian opera singers.

Anyhoo, moving on…

Smith arrived at the noodle shop, panting heavily. He was strangely forceful; as he entered the noodle shop he dragged Agent Brown in like a dead cat, swinging him by the collar and sending him soaring over the counter, then slamming the glass door so hard I almost cracked a pinkie knuckle typing this sentence.

"RUN AWAY! FAR AWAY! BEFORE YOU SEE IT! BEFORE YOUR EYES ARE RUINED FOREVER LIKE MINE!" Smith commanded vehemently, smashing his beloved but tainted sunglasses on the floor.

"Oh God, Smith, what's wrong?" bellowed Jones, the roar of his voice almost blowing his sparkle-glitter eyelashes off.

"I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! God help me, I saw the most horrible thing no man should ever see!" Smith screamed madly, desperately.

"What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? WHAT IS IT! TELL US WHAT IT IS SO WE CAN HELP YOU!" Brown shouted, grasping his fellow Agent's shoulders and shaking them violently.

Smith hyperventilated, his hands quivering uncontrollably. "I saw… I saw… I saw… THE NAUGHTY-NAUGHTY!" he wailed, his cry piercing the heavens and hitting Thomas, who just happened to be flying over the scene, square in the groin with its naughty-naughtiness. Silly Thomas, you know better than to fly in the Matrix right after doing Trinity. You forgot to wait an hour before flying and look what happened! Now you got ball cramps… and that, my friends, is why this painful phenomenon is called the Naughty-Naughty.

"Ooo, I shoulda warned ya about that, Neo my boy," Morpheus said, handing an oblivious Trinity a taco from his local taco-making stand as Thomas did a nose dive and crashed face-first into a gooey pile of dog shit, which lay right next to a random spouting fire hydrant before he actually caught on fire, the flames of which could not be extinguished from the massive wellspring of water spouting up because the fire was electrical... and Thomas was a cyborg and gooey dog shit is combustible. Hehehehehehe.

"Um," blinked Brown. "With _who_, exactly…?"

Smith whispered it into his ear and Brown dropped to the ground, pure hopelessness sinking in his eyes. Brown whispered it to Jones, who stared out ahead.

"God help us all," he said.

* * *

FIVE MINUTES TO GO

* * *

They were so close, they could have tasted sweet victory… they could have tasted life.

Alas, they were no different than the others.

They did not win.

They were sent back to the Source, where they all awaited potential deletion…

At the DMV.

"No, I don't have a 10-40, all I want is a quota on my Audi. No. No. No. Uh… I'm white. Caucasian. No. Um, eleven twenty seventy-seven. Yeah. No. No. Uhh… oh-two-three, sixty-two, fifty-forty-five. Mmm-hmm. Yeah. 45 Adams Street, Sydney, Australia, flat number eight one one two... yeah. No… uhh… three four oh three two. Mmm-hmm. OK. …No. That's Smith. S-M-I-T-H. Mr. Smith at 45 Adams Street. Flat number 8112. Yeah. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm… no. Ugh, fine. It's Aubrey. Aubrey Smith. Mr. Aubrey Smith, get it down, hurry up! No. It starts with an A. No... Ugh… A-U-B-R-E-Y. OK. OK. No. No. P.O. Box One Two One Four, uh, son of a bitch, lemme get my wallet out— Three Seven Five Nine Oh One. Yeah. Smith. Smi-iii-ithhhh. No. No. Five foot… ten, I think. Maybe nine. One hundred and seventy pounds. No. I don't know that in stone. No. No. No. Uhhhhm, blue, maybe blue-green? Uh, OK. OK. Blue. Blond. No. OK. No. Brunette. Hot damn, I don't know. You look at my goddamn hair and tell me. OK. Yeah. Wonderful, this airhead is colorblind… um… OK. No. No. No. No. Audi. Audi. Pronounced ow-dee. A-U-D-I. Yeah. Black. I-S-H-uh, nine four two. Yeah. I work for the city. For the province. Uhh…social work. Yeah. Yeah…yes. What the hell you need that for? It was only one time! Um. OK. No. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Independent. Yeah. Uhhh, I don't really know, uh, if I had to say, I'd say, um, roughly 30 to 45 thousand a year. Yeah. Yeah. No. Independent. Independent. Indie-pen-dent. Yeah. A quarter English, one half Australian, one eighths German, one eighths Irish. Yeah. OK. No. No. Uh… hang on… Jones. Riley Jones. R-I-L-E-Y…J-O-N-E-S. Yeah. Yeah. Nine four one, fifty-two, nine-one-two-four. Skipper Brown. Yeah. S-K-I… am I really spelling out Skipper? Where the hell did this guy get his green card from anyway, the Guatemalan black market? Ran outta fake IDs, so they had to start ripping out pictures from the backs of cereal boxes? Ohhh don't you dare make me spell out "Aubrey" again or I will wring your foreign-ass neck like a wet paper bag you Marxist son of a bitch I bet you voted for Bush twice didn't you like global warming my economic A-S-S you misspelling community college dropout what your mommy couldn't push you through like she did your Bible-thumping peace-love-and-all-things-good-and-mighty dogma? Eh? …OK. OK. No, I'll hold."

Smith sat back down in the waiting line beside Jones and Brown as the next customer walked up to the booth.

Jones and Brown looked at him.

"They were rather friendly," Smith said. "I must say, one of my better experiences at the DMV. Very pleasant, very friendly service. I hope to come back here again when it's like this."

* * *

After the horror of National Human Day was over, the three Agents were still waiting at the Department of Motor Vehicles for their potential deletion draft and Smith's quota on his Audi to be processed and approved.

After a while passed the atmosphere at the DMV wound down to a dark lull as night descended; the department slowed as the personnel left and the lights went off.

And still the Agents sat. Jones and Brown soon fell asleep. Smith was hardly awake, drifting off to Never Never Land just as a figure broke in through the front window and turned on the bright florescent lights.

"WHAT IN THE FLAMING HELL IS THAT—oh it's just Mr. Anderson," Smith said.

"Tommy," Anderson corrected.

"Whatever. What the hell you want, Tom?" Smith grunted.

"I'm here to bust you out," Thomas said.

Smith shot up.

"Really?"

"Naw."

Smith stabbed him in the neck with a chair. Thomas chuckled.

"I'm a cyborg, remember? The Tominator," Thomas said, twisting his decapitated head back on _Exorcist_ style, y'all. He cracked his neck and hunched his shoulders, sighing in audible relief as he rearranged his body parts, like Legos, back in their proper anatomical places. "Anyway, that black guy with the green tie and purple shirt drives me nuts, and I thought if I let you guys get deleted I'll have nothing to do but try to fruitlessly kill myself while listening to another spiel of his about Socialism and the socio-political faults of American democratic principles... ughh, it feels so good to have my balls back in their proper place again. I can't stand having them smacking my eyes. I can't see when I'm flying and then BAM! I'm all, oh God! Why is the SWAT team shooting at my balls? Usually Trinity does that but only she's allowed to do it. It's embarrassing when other people do it, y'know?"

Smith's left eye twitched.

"Anyway, I came here because I wanted to hear who did the naughty-naughty," Thomas said.

Smith whispered it into his ear. Thomas smiled strangely.

"Agh, that's so gross, man, I feel sorry for you," Thomas said, with gooey dog shit still running in thick streaks down his face. "Absolutely dis-gust-ing, dude. I thought the Oracle and the Architect were having some marital disputes. Ah well. They musta gotten over it pretty quick, eh?" Thomas lifted a suggestive eyebrow. "Eh?"

"Yeah." Smith shuddered.

Walking over to Brown, Thomas kicked the chair leg. Brown, in a drowsy stupor, groaned and rolled over.

"Oh, Brown. Buddy. Wake up. I thought you might want this," Thomas said, revealing a chirping yellow puffball duck fluttering uneasily in his arms. "I found him swimming the Bering Straight in circles… silly little thing."

Brown woke up and sat up straight, fully alert.

"Could it be…?" he whispered, his eyes filled with wonder. He stretched out his arms as Thomas carefully handed the creature over.

The fluffy wet cheese-yellow creature hopped into Brown's awed arms, looking blankly up at him and chirping a hungry inquiry; and Brown stared upon his pet with a mixture of reverence and joy.

"Sure-Shits-a-Lot! You came back to save me! I knew we would never truly be apart," Brown said, his smile aglow as he hugged his feathered friend.

"I'm not Sure-Shits-a-Lot. I'm the Aflack duck, bitch," Sure-Shits-a-Lot said in Russian, hopping out of Brown's arms and going down the street to the nearest bar and grill to get some late-night Jell-O shots.

Brown burst into tears. He ran out the door of the DMV into a random street filled with rain and shining headlights, dropping to his despondent, grieving knees as he wept… soap-opera style, y'all.

Smith groaned, his head hitting the chair backwards in almost tangible pain.

Suddenly Thomas produced another yellow duck from his arms; but this one, Smith observed, was visibly different than Sure-Shits-a-Lot. It was older… more dignified. It carried itself with a calm pride and a stout, resolved poise. Indeed, it looked less cute, but it was more commanding… a rather noble thing…

Smith looked up, interested. Maybe this dignified pet would be his. After all, he was the most dignified Agent out there…

"Who is this?" he asked.

"He's a friend of Sure-Shits-a-Lot. His name is King-Fart-ur," Thomas said. "Sure-Shits-a-Lot and King-Fart-ur are best friends forever, just like us!"

Smith had to resist the urge to hock a nuclear noogey at the vague King Arthur pun as he sat in the eternal line at the DMV, wishing that he, too, had landed in a pile of combustible gooey dog shit.

* * *

THA END

…

_A/N: Whew! I'm tired now. See y'all next time. Over and OUT!_


	10. Mr Smith Goes to College

_A/N: Hey y'alls! Let's celebrate the tenth chappie with the TENTH CHAPPIE DANCE! (^.^) (^.^) (^.^) (^.^) (^.^) (^.^) OK I'm tired now..._

_In other news, I've gotten a newer, faster computer that doesn't take ten thousand years to load the home page, yay! And also, I have a new chappie for you... it might not seem as grammatically precise as the other ones because, unfortunately, this computer doesn't have Microsoft Word... NOOOOOOOOOOO!_  
_I NEED SPELL CHECK TO LIVE alright I'm over it already lol._

_A/N #2.) COOKIE TIME!_

_Zack Lector: Yes, you can has cookie. You can has EXTRA BIG COOKIE!_

_Cerulean, my buddy, my buddy: COOKIES! Ones that were not made with the gifts from Sure-Shits-a-Lot, hehehe._

_idestiny: COOKIES! And yes, I'm not going anywhere, I actually live in a dungeon whilst being forced to write random stories about Matrix Agents._

_*cracks knuckles and sharpens a katana* Let's go! I'M READY, IT'S NINJA ASS-KICKING TIME!_

_The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in collective response to the statement above: "Gulp."  
_

* * *

**"Pointless Agent Insanity!**  
**Part VIII: Mr. Smith Goes to College"**

* * *

"What?" said Smith, lividly banging his fists against the executive's dark oak desk. "What do you mean by 'we can no longer fund your insane adventures'?"

"Just that," said the gray-haired executive, looking calmly up at the furious Agent. Looking down at his pocket watch for a moment, he yawned indifferently. "'We can no longer fund your insane adventures'."

"I still don't understand," Smith said, now ragingly confused... wait. "Ragingly confused"? WTF?

Ahem. But I digress...

"How is this possible?" Smith shrieked. "How can what we do cost _that_ much money?"

"In this modern world, everything costs money, Mr. Smith," the executive explained, flipping through a manila folder his secretary gave him. "With the way you're using up your 401K 'insanity' expenses... and given the current state of the economy, in two weeks your funds will be liquidated... you won't be able to do anything. And I mean _anything_. It costs the bank five cents in blinking tax alone... and you blink how many times a year?"

Smith blinked.

"Nickel," the executive said, picking up a random nickel lying on the floor.

Smith blinked again.

"Hot damn, boy, money don't grow on trees," the executive said, fishing his pocket for a dime.

Smith, in an evil capitalist grin, poured lemon juice into his eye; the executive called Donald Trump for another ten thousand pounds of solid gold. Then, hanging up the phone and sighing, the executive took off his glasses and leaned in on the desk.

"Mr. Smith, unless you have a secret stash somewhere—" he began.

Smith bit the inside of his cheek, worrying if the financial executive was referring to the secret stash of pancakes and syrup he kept underneath his bed in preparation for World War Two Point Five: The Fascist Sequel, now starring Mao Zedong as Benito Mussolini. Now at the closest fascist theater near you... or Beijing. Whichever is closer. Tee hee.

"Don't worry, Aunt Jemima, we'll be safe, we'll go somewhere away, far, far away, someplace nice... when the war's over I can go back to timber cutting and we'll live in a nice little nuke-proof bomb shelter... you won't have to worry about cleaning anymore... are we gonna die, Aunt Jemima? What's it feel like to explode, Aunt Jemima? Aunt Jemima, what does 'brinksmanship' mean? I don't like that word very much... the men on the TV like to say fancy words like that... will you please pass me the syrup, Aunt Jemima?" Smith asked in a sweating trance.

"Um, okay," said the executive. "As I was saying, Mr. Smith, unless you have a back-up plan—"

Smith bit the inside of his cheek, worrying if the financial executive was referring to the getaway back-up plan in case the CSI had caught on to his trail in murdering several kinds of innocent blocks of cheese, which was triggered by a particularly traumatic event during his childhood involving a slice of Colby, earning him the name of 'the supermarket cheese killer' because the guy who came up with the clever killer names had died after nobly defending his container of feta with his shopping cart—

"What the hell is this, Monty frigging Python?" the executive shrieked, clearing the air away from the pointless subplot. "Look, Mr. Smith, if you don't get your act together, the whole Matrix is gonna revert back to the primordial Atari state! And I'm not talking _Space Invaders_ or some other 16-bit decency! I'm talking _Pong_ primordial, bitch!"

Smith screamed at the utter horrors of blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, aw you lose...blip, blip, blip, blip.

"NOOOOOOOOO I CAN'T EVER GET THOSE STUPID BANK SHOTS!" he screamed.

"_Mr. Smith!_" the executive screamed, standing up suddenly. The force of this stress ruptured a major blood vessel in his neck and caused massive brain hemorrhage. The executive died instantly and fell to the floor, but, coincidentally, his body was undead enough to get up and walk down the hall to call two security guards to take Smith away and throw him out—literally.

"I'm gonna sue your ass! I'm gonna pull a mega Bill Gates on you, bitch!" Smith screamed as the two guards thrust him out the bank's six-story window. "I'm gonna go to the civil court! The court of appeals! The Supreme Court! I'm gonna pull a legal suit on you so big Judge Judy's gonna say 'daaaamn'! I'm gonna get a chunk of change so large Judge Mathis will take a 36-year vacation in Jamaica! I'm gonna win so hard it'll make Obama cry OW THE DEMOCRATIC GROUND HURTS," he shrieked.

* * *

Smith sat at the kitchen table, despondently looking at a spot of wood and burning a hole through the support structure with his depression-activated heat vision... but the origin of this random superpower is another story for another day.

Jones and Brown stood behind the door frame, glancing upon their cohort with a mixture of pity and exasperation.

Jones nodded to Brown with the customary _Uh-oh, he's burning things down with his depression again _look.

Brown, in reply, shot Jones a W_ell, what the hell am I supposed to do about it, it's his issues _look.

Jones gave Brown a curt _I'm the one who pays the bills, and I pay for that table, therefore I make the rules, and I rule that you go in and talk to him first _glance.

Brown retorted with a _Yeah right! What kind of job is it cross dressing and hitting on a guy named Felix anyway? At least I have some decency to indicate that I am not hitting on guys at the club like some cheesy Jude Law _glare.

Jones' face shrieked at Brown's in middle-age fury, unleashing its most potent, most horrible attack... wrinkle lines.

_NOOOOOOOOOOOO! _cried Brown's young face, unused to such grotesque aging. In a hysterical fit, Brown's face melted off and dropped into a puddle on the floor, running in circles on the kitchen floor trying to scurry away from the horror.

Jones, scowling, picked up Brown's disconnected face and put it on upside down.

"Hmm," said Brown, "so THAT's why the ceiling looks like an M.C. Escher painting right now."

"I heard all of that!" Smith shouted from the kitchen. "Now, you two come in here... I have to talk to you!"

Jones and Brown went in the kitchen and sat down as Smith lifted up his head.

"Uh," he said. "I don't know how to say this... but... um..."

"What? Did you get caught spraypainting the color brown on public toilet seats again?" Jones asked. Getting up, he rolled up a magazine and smacked Smith across the face with it. "Naughty Agent! Naughty, naughty Agent! You know better than to use the color brown! What have I taught you? You always use a brown-green variation so the public restroom patrons think the person who used the stall had contagious diarrhea!"

"I know," replied the Agent. "Naw... it's something else."

Jones sat down again, breathing an audible sigh of relief.

"We have no money," Smith said.

"What?" came the collective response. Then, 0.00253 seconds later... "Ooo! Pretty white butterfly!"

"Focus, men! Look, we have no money. And, unless someone here has a million dollars, 'cause I sure as hell ain't selling my stash of pancakes and syrup, we're going out of business... permanently... but... but now, I think I have a solution, but only I can carry it out, since I think you two cannot amass enough brain cells to operate a loaf of bread—"

Brown and Jones sighed at the closed loaf of bread sitting on the table, who stared evilly back at them with its twist-tie psychological complexity.

"Men... I have no choice... in order to obtain more money for us to continue our insane, cherished existence... I must go away to college," declared Smith.

Jones and Brown, at the mention of the dreaded word "college," looked once at each other, then ran away in opposite directions, just like the time Thomas made a whole apartment building implode on itself with the world's largest chilidog-induced fart. What, you thought the ending of the first _Matrix_ was special? That Thomas was actually becoming the One in that scene? Ha, ha, ha! Brad Pitt's the One, you fools... but, unfortunately, Morpheus didn't jack him out in time, so now he's stuck out in digital limbo somewhere robbing trains as Jesse James. Stupid Brad... that's what you get for dumping Jenny.

Fortunately, Brown ran into the escape door as he was going out, catching his eyelid onto a coat rack in the hall, ripping off his face again and putting it back on correctly as he sprinted out the apartment in the customary Agent _I just got my_ _face ripped off hooray I'm a man now _hysteria.

* * *

SMITH'S COLLEGE APPLICATION

* * *

NAME: Agent Smith. Ask anything else of me and I will shoot you.

AGE: What part of "ask anything else of me and I will shoot you" don't you understand?

SEX: Blam! ...Wait. That wasn't the gun. Hehehehehe.

NAME OF HIGH SCHOOL: This is not a gun.

HIGH SCHOOL ADDRESS: Guns go boom.

HIGH SCHOOL TRANSCRIPT: Wheeeeeeeeee guns.

ADDRESS: Boom shaka laka. That was the gun. Boom biddy bye bye, sucka.

PHONE NUMBER: What did I just say! *click* *click* WHAT THE—oh shit. I forgot to reload.

EMAIL: Uh, this is a Civil War musket...this is gonna be a while...

SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER: Why do I keep all of these fifty-pound Civil War weapons in my back pocket? What, have I become Robert E. Lee's pocket bitch or something?

GPA: Now, where the hell did I put my black powder horn...hmmm.

INTENDED MAJOR: Ummmmm, maybe I could sharpen my katanas. Banzai!

AWARDS AND ACTIVITIES: Naw. I'm super queasy about the flying manga-gore uberTERIAAA stuff. Maybe I'll just drive back home and retrieve my medieval jousting sticks instead.

LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION: Screw this. I lost my keys. You're frigging brilliant, Smith. No wonder Anderson is still on the loose. He's still alive because you can't organize.

SAT/ ACT TOTAL SCORE: Anderson... you Socialist.

VERBAL: Socialist duck lover.

MATH: SOCIALIST DUCK LOVER! SPAWN OF HELL!

PERSONAL ESSAY: _At our university we encourage diversity among our students. Describe a situation in which you fostered diversity. _YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT DIVERSITY I GOT YOUR DIVERSITY RIGHT HERE UP THE BARREL OF YOUR SOCIALIST DUCK-LOVING ASSES—oh wait I didn't even put the ramrod in yet. DAMN YOU, YOU DAMNABLY DAMNABLE DAMNED DAMNING DAMN DAMN DAMN damn damn my pen is running out. (_Below the pen marks running out a hole the size of a jousting stick is crafted in the shape of a signature named "Smith", although below the signature there is a picket sign that reads "DAMN SOCIALISTS! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER... AND AS A LIBERTARIAN I DO NOT APPROVE OF IT, BUT WILL SUPPORT YOUR INDIVIDUAL POLITICAL RIGHT TO DO IT ANYWAY")_

* * *

FIRST PERIOD

* * *

Smith sat in first period film studies, awaiting the first day of college with dread.

After the initial chaos of the lecture room died down, a strange-looking man, of whom Smith deducted to be the instructor, walked up to the podium, clearing his throat as the five hundred students grew silent in academic reverence.

"Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives," the instructor said.

"Ugh," said Smith.

His words echoed in the religious silence, intruding the sanctity with its blunt overtones of cynicism. Everyone turned around to look at him with wide, questioning eyes.

"Excuse me?" said the instructor.

"Okay, I gotta say this for the sake of everybody... _Jackass_ is not a film, it's just a bunch of guys running around thinking of all the ways someone could potentially die without having to do any of the 'killing oneself' process," Smith said.

"Oh, so he is a nonbeliever, I see. He is a nonbeliever, class! WOLF DOWN THE NONBELIEVER!" Johnny Knoxville shrieked, sending his massive army of bored adolescent boys out to decimate Smith via hitting him over the head with wet flying tuna fish.

* * *

SECOND PERIOD

* * *

Second period studio art, Smith hoped, still dripping wet with Chicken of the Sea, was going to be a lot better than first period. He had assumed a lot of things in his life, and every time he did, this made an ass out of you and me. But this time, he hoped his assumptions would make an ass out of you and an ump.

"Strike three!" said the disgraced umpire, jumping over the Brooklyn Bridge in utter dishonor.

Smith raised an eyebrow at the bad 'assumption' pun as he took a seat in front of a bowl of fruit, bottles, carved figures, and other assorted objects lying on a large table in the center of the room.

"I didn't know you were good at art, Smith," said a bored student sitting beside him. She flicked off the eraser from her pencil, which landed in the bowl of fruit and caused it to detonate in a cataclysmic fruit-eraser nuclear reaction. "Whoops," she said, staring at the empty room of dead art students.

"Yeah, I am. I can do anything I want to," Smith said nonchalantly. Then, realizing something, he looked up. "Wait... how do you know my name?"

"Ha ha, gotcha Smith, you Aussie," I said, flashing a billowing black cape and flying straight through the roof before the fanfiction critics could bitch at me about a potential Mary-Sue author insert.

Smith looked up.

"I seriously have to stop the LSD," he said, sketching a piece of rubble made in the shape of the Mona Lisa in his notebook, "because Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is actually starting to make sense to me now."

* * *

THIRD PERIOD

* * *

After second period Smith had to go to room H210 for "Shakespearian Studies," which is affectionately known among creative writing majors as "I Have No Fucking Clue What You're Saying, You Dead English Son of a Bitch 101." But as soon as he arrived he saw that everyone was already sprawled across the lecture floor, dead.

"Meh, it's all the same anyway... all the fluffy-ass characters die at the end," he said, walking out of the mattress-padded room as Romeo dueled Othello with Hamlet's blood-stained Q-tips as flying cottonball missiles brutally tickled Macbeth's head, causing him to chortle himself to death with their fatal featheriness, tossed lightly across the room by Malcolm's hearty army of mighty twigs.

* * *

FOURTH PERIOD

* * *

"Math review," Smith groaned as he chewed on his pen cap. "Ugh."

_Name: Agent Smith_

_Chapter Review_

_Pages 511 to 513, numbers one through six._

_Remember to include all formulas, diagrams, drawings and substitutions._

_1.) X is equal to the ratio of times the Oracle bakes delicious cookies and the Architect comes home drunk. If the Architect was hanging out with the guys at a strip club in south Tunisia at 8:17 p.m. EST, how long will it take, given the time shift, jet lag, and relentless snot-nosed kid kicking chairness, for the white-haired dumbass to safely return home to the US and delete all the 57 Facebook messages posted on his wall by the lovelorn stripper, sober himself up in a ice cold shower, and effectively invent an elaborate lie about an illness he contracted at work the Oracle will feel sorry for and bake him a batch of 'get-well' cookies over before 10:00 p.m. EST, in terms of X?_

_2.) X is the standard deviation of mean Z. If Thomas Anderson is being a dumbass and takes both the red pill and the blue pill X times less than the mean of Z, how long will it take you to realize that this question is a stats problem and requires needlessly lengthy data lists to solve, in terms of X and Z?_

_3.) Agent Johnson, like Thomas, is also a dumbass and stops during an important kill to measure an angle adjacent to the side of an escape building. If a ladder holding the escaping Zionite measures 42 feet, and the adjacent side of theta measures 34 degrees, what is the measure of the side the Zionite slides down on past the Agent who is too much of a dumbass to get a damn calculator to figure it out?_

_4.) Trinity must rewire the entire electrical system of the Nebuchadnezzar before Morpheus the Socialist I-Don't-Believe-in-Numbers-Because-They're-All-Equ al-to-Me dumbass realizes that it has been down for seventeen days straight. She has already calculated the green wires to have voltages measuring the negative square root of 239. What is this measurement in terms of i? Remember to reduce your answer to simplest radical form, you decimal-loving dumbass._

5_.) Professional dumbasses Agents Jones and Brown are arguing over who will get the last slice of delicious blueberry pie. If they decide to settle the matter via playing Russian roulette in rotations of two, there is a one in six probability that some random person walking by the scene will get shot in the head very __Cold Case__ melodramatic style. Given that this has not yet happened, and two of the empty pistol slots have already been triggered, what is the probability that Agent Jones will shoot himself in the head and reenter the body of Penelope Cruz?_

_6.) Sentinels travel in paths resembling the function equation of y equals one half sine theta minus 2 sevenths. Before the robotic dumbasses get bored and decide to collide themselves into B-52 stealth bombers, what is the amplitude, period, and frequency of this equation? _

When Smith was finished answering the questions, he put his calculator away and stared at the paper rather soberly.

"Why do I have the vague feeling my mathematics teacher considers me a...'dumb ass'?" he asked.

* * *

DURING FIFTH PERIOD LUNCH... SMITH IS TAKING A COFFEE BREAK, Y'ALL, HIS BRAIN HURTS LIKE A BITCH WHO CUTS YOU OFF WHEN YOU MERGE INTO TRAFFIC AND YOUR INSURANCE PROVIDER TAKES YOUR HOUSE AWAY BECAUSE YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE WHOLE 'YOUR HOUSE IS DEDUCTIBLE TOO' CLAUSE AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT TRAFFIC BITCH, I SEE YOU! CUT ME OFF WILLYA! I SHALL UNLEASH MY CARDBOARD BOX WRATH ALL OVER YOUR LITTLE SIDE-SWIPING ASS...RIGHT AFTER I SEE WHAT'S INSIDE THIS HERE EMPTY PLASTIC CONTAINER ROLLING AROUND ON THE DUMPSTER BOTTOM. YUM, IT'S BANANA YOGURT! OH SHIT... THAT'S NOT BANANA YOGURT.

* * *

Brown was watching _Wheel of Fortune_ as Penelope Cruz walked in carrying a large slice of blueberry pie.

"Whoa!" Brown exclaimed, falling over the back of the couch. "It's Jennifer Lopez! My dreams have finally come true!"

"_Eres una pieza de mierda, puta de quien le aman las tartas_," Jones said, tossing the pie in Brown's face as he sat down. "And I am NOT Jenny from the block, you American _pendejo_!"

"Awww, you're so cute when you're mad," Brown said, his face covered in blueberry jam as he licked off the last of the pie crumbs off the floor like a hungry Groucho Marx. "Does my little buddy have PMS today?"

"Shut up," said Jones, stuffing another small-town drug store filled with Maxi Pads into his purse. "I feel horrible. Like...like somebody punched me in the ovary," he groaned, clutching at Penelope's stomach.

"You're so cute when your fallopian tubes shoot out an egg, at high velocity, from the approximate five hundred that reside in your ovaries. Do you want me to throw you a super special menstrual party so we can celebrate the shedding of your uterine wall together?" Brown asked. Waiting a moment for the female audience to stop loading their U2-37 assault rifles, he shuddered. "Ew! That sounds like the subject matter of a disturbing alien movie."

Jones grinned. Jones the cat from the Ridley Scott 1979 _Alien_ movie, that is. He smiled at the alien reference, licking himself soundly and watching on as Jones the menstruating Penelope Cruz/ J. Lo busily subjected Brown to a slow, painful torture by tying him to a stake and burning his ears off alive listening to various Radio Disney-Italian concerto remixes.

* * *

SIXTH PERIOD

* * *

"Maybe forensics class will be interesting," Smith said.

As he walked by the science building, studying his schedule, he saw Agents Temperance Brennan 'Bones' and Seeley Joseph 'Booth' sprint out of the anthropology department, running frantically away from the 'real' cops as they cross-examined the crime scene of dead dinosaurs.

"I told you, this protoceratops had died of a blood infection from the lead bullet sinking into his brain tissue, not from the trauma of actual impact," Bones shouted to her partner. "You can even see traces of the infection here in the outer cleft. I swear, Booth, you're such a scientific poohead about these things! You're nothing but a overgrown piece of XY chromosome outgrowth!"

"First of all, Bones, as I was telling you before you kicked me in the nads and ran off with the dinosaur skulls, it's called balls, every guy has them, and no, they're not mini-testicular tumors growing out the side of my clitoris," Booth shouted back. "I have no clitoris! I'm a hermaphrodite... I have both!"

"You're clearly intersex, with orientation inclining towards more male characteristics," Bones said, dodging incoming SWAT team bullets. "To what extent, however, may be safely pulled into question."

"Ha, ha! Intersex virgin! You're an intersex virgin!" said Booth.

Smith walked up to Bones and Booth, who were tucking and rolling on the concrete, arguing their way out of yet another thirty minutes of plot substance.

"Uh, hi? When you guys are done denying your clear sexual attractions towards one another, can one of you help me find the forensics department?" Smith said, handing his schedule over to Booth.

"Oh, sure, buddy," Booth said, taking the schedule. "It's in the science building to the west of the Jennings memorial—OH FUCK THEY'RE HERE FOR THOSE SKULLS BONES, RUN AWAY, RUN THE HELL AWAY!" he shrilled.

"What?" said Bones, sleeping with the dinosaur skulls. Quickly throwing on her suit, she got up and sighed. "Oh, yeah."

"Shit! I'm dead, you fucker," Booth said as he died from the SWAT team packing sixty straight magazines of ammunition through his head. "Thanks a lot!"

"Sorry," said Bones, stepping over his dead body. "I'mma go return these, I'll be back in a few."

"Oy," said Smith. "I should have just watched _CSI _instead, what with all this extensive character development."

* * *

SEVENTH PERIOD... THE LAST PERIOD OF THE DAY, YAY!

* * *

"Philosophy?" Smith asked, glaring at his schedule. "I'm the antagonist of the most philosophical movie ever made! Why do I have to take philosophy?"

Just as he asked this question, Friedrich Nietzsche swooped down on a magical bicycle that had a 'PHILOSOPHY IS FUN... JUST DON'T ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE AND YOU'LL BE FINE' flag fluttering in the wonderful nihilist breeze.

Smith lifted an eyebrow as Soren Kierkegaard followed in a jet plane, pressed down on the throttle and blew up Nietzsche's magical nihilist bike with a medium-range heat-seeking missile, the smoke of the exhaust reading, 'YEAH RIGHT, LEAP OF FAITH BABY! WHOOO'...

The remainder of his message was obliterated by a hydrogen bomb inside Kierkegaard's jet going off as it flew by a meditating Lao Tzu, who transformed into a pretty butterfly and flew away into the sunset as a bunch of philosophy teachers eating their lunch in the witnessing square threw up from the inconsistent ontological absurdity of what they had just seen.

"Oh yeah, I remember the reason now," said Smith, ducking nervously into the classroom before Carl Jung could jump him for his extra archetypes in the parking lot.

* * *

Smith entered the room, which was strangely green and smelled suspiciously of chocolate chip cookies.

He turned around.

"Oh geez," said Smith, dropping his books. "It's _you_."

"Sorry, kid, the Wachowski brothers couldn't get more philosophical with any other genre-significant character," said the Oracle. "What ya see is what ya get, son."

"I'm no one's son," Smith said. "Smith was from his mother's womb untimely ripped... wait. I'm still stuck in Shakespeare mode... I meant I have no Mom."

The Oracle lifted her head. "Mm-hmm. And how does that make you feel?"

A therapist's chair materialized beside her.

"Okay," Smith said, staring at the chair blankly. "I don't know what a Mom is. I just heard that word on MTV once."

The Oracle nodded. She pulled out something that looked like a clipboard and began looking studiously at the drawings on it. Gesturing towards the Agent, she flipped the clipboard over. "What does this look like to you?"

"I don't know... Sati's crappy drawing of Natalie Portman?" Smith asked.

As soon as he made this statement Sati ran in and kicked him in the No-No Place. As Smith staggered over from the stinging consequences of his wrongful comment, Natalie Portman ran into the room, kicked Smith in the Happy Sunshine No-No Place before running out, called the Happy Sunshine No-No Place because the pain in his No-No Place made sunshine... and that is what you tell kids who get kicked in the nads for the first time why the sky is blue... their pain must fuel the sky gods with painful ball sacrifice. WE MUST ALL MAKE SACRIFICES, KIDS, SUCK IT UP AND REMEMBER TO WEAR AN ATHLETIC CUP WHEN THE SUN IS SHINING!

"What the hell? Is Anderson writing this script again? Ugh. I knew it. I shouldn't have left the Architect with that idiot," the Oracle shuddered.

* * *

MEANWHILE

* * *

Thomas and the Architect were playing Super Mario Brothers. Well, Super Mario Brothers for the Architect's new multiscreen Wii.

Suddenly, Thomas looked up from his controller and turned to the Architect.

"What is the meaning of life?" he asked.

The Architect shrugged.

"Who am I?" Thomas said.

"Keanu Reeves," said the Architect.

"Who is Keanu Reeves?"

"Why do you keep asking me all these philosophical-ass questions? It's your turn, you jackoff," the Architect replied coolly, turning to the many screens showing a jumping Mario.

"Okay," said Thomas as Zion and the entire Matrix blew up. "Uhh, I think I forgot something... what did I forget?" he said, tapping his lip.

Suddenly the bright door of light opened up.

"You forgot your keys," said a dead Trinity. "Here."

She tossed the keys to Thomas as she collapsed, rose up, and became a goth vampire.

"All right, I'm dead, I get to be Kristen Stewart now! Whoo hoo!" she shouted, running gleefully off into the sunset.

* * *

MEANWHILE, DURING THE MEANWHILE

* * *

"Um," said Smith. "Okay...?"

"Heh. I always thought that man was a load," said the Oracle, as she lit a cigarette, set the curtains on fire and put out the flames by glaring at them. "A load of pure _bullcrap_..."

Just then a bull walked by, ears raised to hear the species-ist comment. The Oracle, hating to be politically correct, narrowed her eyes and cleared her throat.

"Sorry, did I say bullcrap?" she said. "I really meant _the excretions of cattle made upon the natural time of digestion_."

"Damn straight," said the bull, turning around and walking proudly down the hall with a tattoo that said 'FIGHT THE BURGER KING POWER' on its triumphant derriere.

Smith had an aneurysm, which he has pretty often these days because of state budget cuts, falling dead to the floor. Unfortunately, he reentered the body of Natalie Portman and was sucked into _V for Vendetta_ for a while before blowing up several fascist buildings in a Guy Fawkes mask in 2068 Britain and returning to the obsolete 1999 Matrix.

Smith stepped in front of the Oracle, desperate.

"Look, how do I get a job?" he said. "I'm eating Ramen noodles and consuming orange juice in record amounts! Oh God oh God oh God I'm worse than all the Chris Cornells of the world put together! I'm talking _Scream_ and _Euphoria Morning_ Chris Cornell, without the Soundgarden cult following!" he hyperventilated.

"You wanna job? You wanna get money? Okay. It's simple. You just close your eyes, click your red heels three times and wish with all your heart: I wish I had a job. I wish I had a job. I wish I had a JOB!" the Oracle said.

"What if I don't have red heels?" Smith asked, looking down upon his shiny leather feet.

"Then no job for you, Dorothy! You'll have to toil in the cheap plastic factory making obsolete children's board games until the day Social Security kicks its butt into high gear and pays everybody's pension an extra twenty-five percent interest... and that's until the end of time! MWA HA HA," said the Oracle, laughing hysterically and choking on the Social Security reference. "Damn, I gotta stop the cigs," she said. "Mama wants to get her slice o'the cheese, fool!"

Smith inched away from the classroom as she immediately lapsed into an old people spiel about the days when Sega made thirty-two forms of video game systems for the same damn five Sonic the Hedgehog games, children learned their manners, the spreading of mayonnaise on Oscar Mayer bologna served as a sacrificial rite in the refrigerator religions, Reaganomics were the prevalent business policies during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, Toyotas were low mileage cardboard cereal boxes, record players were invented to serve as wheels, Social Security was the responsibility of the government, and everyone spoke Mandarin Chinese and ate French bread crusts while dancing the Charleston and the robot at the discotheque.

* * *

HALF AN HOUR LATER

* * *

Smith waited at the bus stop, hoping above all hopes that this time his bus driver wasn't a distraught Gwen Stefani high on cherry vodka and sugar pills. He shivered slightly at having to hear the whiny, glass-shattering pitch of "If I was a rich girl, na na na na na na na na na see I'd have all the money in the world if I was a wealthy girl WAH WHERE'S MY BANDMATES I'M SO SAD ABOUT THE 2000S NOW!" over the speakers.

A quiet, friendly looking man who was carrying a guitar case was waiting at the bus stop. Smith looked up, noticing the black cap reading "Unite!" worn forwards on his head.

Quickly scanning the Matrix's data banks for the program's information, Smith was only able to come up with the name Tom... the databanks were running extra slow that day due to the hot turkey and gravy sandwich Agent Brown had shoved into the Matrix's VCR player in an attempt to mechanically reboot a few inert Sentinels.

"Tom? Tom Anderson?" Smith asked, tapping the man on the shoulder.

The man named Tom blinked and turned around, puzzled.

"Anderson? No. I don't know any Anderson. I'm Tom Morello," he said.

"Ah," replied Smith, wondering where the hell Zack was... and, if you understood that, you're way too obsessed with a certain band. That's all I'm sayin'. Koff koff.

Tom Morello turned to look at Smith, the strange establishment man who was staring at him and his guitar case.

"So, what do you do?" he asked.

Tom Morello the greatest guitar player of our generation almost had an aneurysm at hearing this question... oh wait, no, that was me.

Then, all of a sudden, Chris Cornell rounded the far corner, seeming to look for someone he knew...

"Shit, shit, SHIT!" said Tom Morello, hiding behind his guitar case. "It's Chris Cornell, he's looking for me again...um, um, um, TELL HIM TOM HAS A GRAVE MASCARA ILLNESS!" he screamed.

Tom dove into the bushes. A few minutes he reemerged as Miley Cyrus.

"I have a crush on Billy Ray," he said shyly, twirling a strand of dirty blonde hair. "Bye!"

As he skipped off with his guitar case Chris Cornell walked up to Smith. He sported a short, spiky black haircut and large sunglasses, the latter of which he tipped curiously.

"Excuse me sir, but was that Miley Cyrus you were talking to just now?" Chris Cornell asked.

Smith shot him at point-blank range.

"TRY TO BREAK UP RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE WILLYA YOU SCREECHY AUDIOSLAVE BITCH!" Smith screamed from behind two smoking German chain guns at the singer's dead body. "And no, that was Tom Morello. Miley's across the street over there."

Just as Miley Cyrus looked up from her international democracy newspaper Smith rained down a hail of bullets on her.

After the smoke cleared she yawned and walked away.

"Oh yeah, I forgot, it's Ashlee Simspon who Disney hired me to kill," Smith said. "Oops."

* * *

Then the weary Agent returned home, to a refuge of... even greater insanity than that in the day he just had, which, logically and grammatically, doesn't make any sense... but OH WELL! I'm high on Reese's Cups now, so to all I must say a collective _Wheeeeeeee haaaaaaaaa suckas!_

Ahem... moving on...

Smith returned home to see Agents Jones and Brown dead.

"Aw, shit," said Smith. "Did you two forget to breathe again?"

"No. We're just possessed by the spirits of dead people," Jones replied, pointing to an Ouija board positioned in the middle of the room. "It's fun."

"Uhhh... okay. Who are you possessed by?" Smith said.

"Adam Sandler," Jones said.

"Adam Sandler's not dead," Smith said.

Jones chuckled. Smith, realizing something grave, opened his mouth to say something but was silenced by his cohort.

Walking over to the closet, he opened it. A flood of money rushed out, nearly burying him alive and spilling out the contents of his apartment into the city street below.

"Is that where you got all this money from?" Smith blurted, ecstatically swimming in money. Finally, his days at the hell called the collegiate institution were over, gone, a distant memory..."Wait."

A few seconds later he choked the Adam Sandler spirit right out of Jones and beat the living, er, living dead shit out of the Agent.

"You FOOL! THIS IS A MILLION DOLLARS' WORTH OF ARUBIAN MONEY! IT'S NOT WORTH MY SHIT IN GOLD!" Smith screeched.

Just then, looking on the scene with sadistic pleasure, the proud bull with the 'FIGHT THE BURGER KING POWER' tattoo on its heiny walked up.

"Ha, ha, ha, you ish a greedy human. How does it feel, the shoe on the other foot now, greedy human?" the bull asked. Then, looking at the camera, it flashed a very capitalist thumbs-up as Jones ran out into the street, pantsless and in hot pursuit with Smith spraying him down with a fifty-foot fire hose, effectively creating the world's first panstless waterslide and earning back the insanity funds through the patent of this brilliant creation.

* * *

THA END


	11. The TRUE Matrix, Part A

_A/N #1: Hey, I just wanted to say to all who reviewed to the second chapter of "Memoirs of Insanity" (you know who you are), THANK YOU! I was having such a crap mental day (you know, the one where you're super down on yourself about stuff and all that Dr. Phil negative self-talk blah blah blah), and making you guys laugh is what really makes me happy. Thanks for understanding my nuclear meltdown and hanging in there with the lil' SAT rant back there._

_A/N #2: I'm losing track of reviewers. I'll try to get cookies in whenever I can. To all who review, as well as the regulars, EXTRA COOKIES! HAVE THE COOKIE JAR TODAY! I'll reestablish proper connections as soon as possible. Cookies to ALL!_

_A/N #3: I just watched the first Matrix today and it gave me an idea...unfortunately, this means breaking up the chapters like Ch. 3, 4, and 5 and making each a bit shorter. Fortunately for YOU, this means more chappies. Unfortunately, again, I must insert a disclaimer here that some of the lines quoted are from the first Matrix, that I do not own the Matrix or any of its characters, they are copyright the Wachowskis/Silver Productions/Warner Bros... ummmm...and I think that's just about it, so let's get goin' along now. _

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!**

**Part IX: The TRUE Matrix, Part A"**

The Agents sat around the kitchen table, not doing much.

All of a sudden, a plastic clock bolstered to the wall sounded a chime, temporarily breaking their lethargy.

"Uh-oh, it's three o' clock. I have to water Charlie Sheen," Jones said. "He'll die if he doesn't get his water at exactly three o' clock."

Jones walked over to a flower pot sitting on the sill, revealing Charlie Sheen's head dressed in a Phil Collins giant petal costume. Charlie opened his mouth and Jones poured some Aquafina into it.

His thirst quelled, Charlie Sheen flashed a satisfied grin and wiggled his giant petals as he sat perched on the window sill. Then, glancing at his watch, he realized the time and jumped out the window, stretching his new pterodactyl wings he had purchased off of eBay, his cries of "WINNING!" ringing in the distance as he smacked himself across a Metro bus windshield, wiped off when the bus driver groaned, thinking the usual, and turned on the super-heavy-duty-it's-raining-Charlie-Sheen-again windshield wipers.

A flyer that had slipped out of Charlie Sheen's back pocket fluttered to the floor. Curious, Jones picked it up.

"'Now Wanted'," he read. "'New Actors to Play in New Movie. Must be willing to work for payment in dirt coins and bring Samantha her dry cleaning 'cause she's a real bitch about those things in the morning.'" Jones looked up, then resumed reading. "'The movie is a sci-fi called _The Matrix._ Uber-Republican conservatives wanted to play part of bad guys. Must have slight personality disorders.' Hmmm, you don't think that applies to us, do you?"

"I don't know," Brown said, rearranging his schizophrenia-manic-depressive-bipolar-OCD pills in alphabetical order as he smiled and cried on opposing sides of his face.

Jones sat down. "What is this anyway?"

"It's a casting call," said Smith, bored. "They send those out whenever movie directors don't want to pay ten grand for two and a half minutes of Orlando Bloom's time."

"Well...it might be fun to be in a movie. We'll have a chance to get out of the apartment, y'know?" Jones mused, his voice revealing a particular strain of longing.

Smith shot straight up, now alert.

"No. No. No. Don't you dare say it. You know we all get launched into a random-ass adventure every time that that wretched word is implied, spoken, uttered, whispered, thought, felt, screamed, or said. I'm too tired to deal with it right now. I don't want to do it. I'm already pooped from scooping up after that runaway African elephant," he said. He shuddered at the thought of the twenty-ton plastic scooper, and also at the fact of having to be sprayed with a maelstrom of giant kitty litter bits.

"I'm bored. Let's go on a cheap cinematic adventure!" Brown shrieked. Upon mention of the vile word 'bored,' Smith immediately began loading a sniper rifle and painting a red-white bullseye on the back of Brown's head.

"All right, I'm in. What about you, Smith?" Jones asked.

Smith rifle malfunctioned, firing prematurely and the bullet cracking clean in half upon impact with Brown's hard skull. Sputtering incoherently, he swore the words "go-shove-a-turquoise-pineapple-up-your-nose-you-wax-eating-turtle-head" in Tagalog.

"Soooo, I'll take that as a yes," Jones said, busily filling out the information card.

"No. No. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing this. I'M NOT GONNA DO IT!" Smith shrilled.

…

FIVE SECONDS LATER

…

The trio sat on the movie set.

Smith glared.

The unit director, arriving slowly, sat down in front of Jones and Brown opened the character notes.

"Let's see...you two are Agent Jones and Agent Brown. Your aliases are Bread'n'Butter, PeeBee'n'Jay, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Stupid and I'm-with-Stupid, Donny and Marie, Barbie and Ken, Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, Dumb and Dumber, Amos and Andy, Salt n' Pepa, Thelma and Louise, Tom and Jerry, Bill and Ted, Batman and Robin, Johnson and Johnson, Bones and Booth, SpongeBob and Patrick, Bert and Ernie, Gumby and Pokey, Itchy and Scratchy, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Ren and Stimpy, Wallace and Gromit, Cookies'n'Milk, Peaches'n'Cream, Tristan and Isolde, Chalk'n'Cheese, Cheech and Chong, Dorothy and Toto, Fish'n'Chips, Scully and Mulder, and Starsky and Hutch."

Jones and Brown shrugged. That was all the character depth they needed. Then, five seconds later, they turned back to the director and asked: "What do we do?"

"You fight. A lot," replied the director.

Jones and Brown looked at each other, then promptly jumped into two tanks and launched fifty short-range missiles at one another.

"Okay," Smith said as the two jumped out of the tanks and hit the flaming ground as their parachutes made out of plastic sporks deployed. "Who am I, then?"

"You? You're Agent Smith. You're the epistemological badass of this movie. You explain everything in lengthy speeches that put St. Augustine to shame. You are by far the most annoying, enigmatic, hot-headed, volatile, non-Australian Australian that has ever existed, you have a professional personality that rivals that of a wet paper bag, you send to the audience the message that you secretly pick your nose and eat it when the others aren't looking, your American voice is gravelly, you are the only Agent alive who can shoot a target that is thirteen stationary inches in front of your face, you are colorblind and optically dependent upon wearing a greenish-variation-of-black suit and subsequently obsessed with your sunglasses, you detest everything that is even a little bit left of the Margaret Thatcher political spectrum, you like watching Guatemalan soccer on ESPN, and you often belt it out to James Brown in the car with the windows rolled up all the way...that's just about it, I think...oh, and you also say 'damn' excessively."

"Damn straight," said Smith, flashing a damn proud thumbs-up.

…

FIRST SCENE WITH THE AGENTS- AUDI SCENE/ BROWN CHASING TRINITY

TAKE ONE

...

Smith was late to the shoot, speeding along the highway.

"Whoa!" Jones screamed. "Slow the hell down!"

Brown leaned out the side of the car, his head sticking out the window. He threw up in the wind, the puke of which formed a neat little toll booth in a nearby vacant parking lot.

"I have no damn clue how to drive this damn thing," Smith said, running over several pedestrian signs. Glowering, he stuck his hand out the window and flipped off a nonexistent penguin as he hit another sign and the trio of Agents simultaneously bounced up and collectively banged their heads on the metal roof. "Damn city can't even bother to fill in the damn potholes in the damn road, goddammit!"

Jones looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a dead Carrie-Anne Moss lying in the middle of the road.

He shrugged.

Bouncing along with the car's bumpiness, Brown nonchalantly glanced at his wristwatch. "We're supposed to be stopping in three, two, one..." A hard thump sounded. He looked up. "And we just ran over the Joe Pantoliano."

"Meh, Cypher was a creeper anyway," Jones said.

"I kinda liked him, but he had too much of a goatee," replied Brown. "It was like a mini Chuck Norris; it would punch you in the face with its muscly goatee-ness if you weren't looking directly at it."

"Shut up, guys, hot damn, we're gonna be on camera soon," said Smith, getting out of the Audi. Rising up, the three of them closed their respective car doors and gazed blankly into the florescent camera lights. Waving two fingers in front of his face, Andy, the director for the day, signaled action.

"Lieutenant," Smith said.

The Lieutenant looked up, red jelly spattered across his nervous face. "Wuh? I didn't do it. It was all Johnny's fault, it was all his idea, see? But Johnny's in the slammer now, they got 'im in now. It was all Johnny's idea to hide the doughnuts' bodies in the plastic Tupperware container and ship it off to sea. Johnny hated doughnuts, man. He beat them to death with his nightstick, screamin' all 'bout how they be perpetuatin' them doughnut-cop stereotypes, and then all of a sudden they just fell dead. I dunno, man, I dunno, sometimes me an' Johnny be 'wake on our shifts and we hear them screamin' revenge in the night, like, I dunno, like ol' powder-spooks or somethin'. I don't know. I just got caught up in alla' it. I didn't know what we were doing. We were scared and stupid and we didn't know what was happening. GOD, I DIDN'T DO IT! I DIDN'T DO IT!"

The Lieutenant shot himself in the head with his revolver and fell dead before them. The Agents blinked.

"Sergeant?" Smith asked. A cop came over and stepped over the paranoid Lieutenant's body.

"Awww shit," said the Sergeant, dipping his head down.

"Sergeant, you were given specific orders," Smith said, measuring his words out in American precision. _You so much as say 'mate' and I will skin you alive and cook you as environmentally safe chicken, _the director had said.

The Sergeant looked up. "Hey, I'm just doin' my job. You give me that 'juris-my-dick-tion' crap, you can cram it up your ass."

"The orders were for your protection."

The Sergeant chuckled.

"I think we can handle one little girl," he said.

Smith looked down as the police apprehended a vigilant Dora the Explorer.

"Hey, kids! Can you say 'the police force is a piece of shit' with me in Spanish?...You can?...Okay! _La policia es una pieza de mierda,_" Dora spat, huffing as a policeman yanked on her cuffs. "Yeah, you act all high and mighty now! Wait 'till Swiper steals your identity and wrecks your perfect little lives forever! Wait 'till you get so pissed at living in a cereal box that you try to kill him with a half-expired credit card and the po-po comes along to apprehend your lil' vigilante ass and they throw you in the slammer and give you a green-ass lawyer who don't know his own ass from a hole in the ground and then you turn into a security blanket for some former linebacker named Fish Sticks! Just you wait, you mothafuckas! Me and Boots are gonna bust this joint and have you all on yo' hands and knees! Just you wait!" she screamed.

"Dora, I just got a call from the station. They killed Boots because he was holding a five-pound stash of Pixie Sticks, refused to hand them over to the authorities, resisted arrest and opened fire," said the Sergeant.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" cried Dora, dropping to her knees. Breaking free of her Band-Aid handcuffs, she plunged a Q-tip dagger into her heart as little kids around the world watched on in horror, knowing in their hearts that they would forevermore have to watch iCarly on Nickelodeon.

Smith knew it was going to be a long day.

…

SECOND SCENE WITH THE AGENTS- INTERROGATION SCENE

...

A few hours later Smith, Jones, and Brown stood beside the interrogation table, watching on as Andy flipped through the script.

"No, no, no," said Andy, pressing his finger down on the interrogation table, "you launch the authoritarian speech first, THEN close his mouth and put the bug on his belly."

"Sounds kinda gross," Jones said, flipping through page two of a Vogue magazine. "Can't we just take turns having sex with the guy and get over it?"

Frantically, Andy pointed to the director's chair that had the label 'THE MATRIX' on it.

"Oh. OH," Jones said, realizing something. "OH. I thought we were in _John Tucker Must Die._ Oh. Okay."

Getting up, Jones walked out of the room.

"WTF?" screamed Andy. Whirling around, he gripped Smith's jacket with sudden terror. "Agent Jones just left!"

"Yeah, what about it?" grunted Smith.

"What about it? _What about it?" _the director shrieked."He's the one who gets shot in the head by the hot female lead! He's absolutely crucial to this story! He offsets your lack of a personality and Brown's lack of Americanness! He's your right hand man! He's the butter to Brown's bread!"

Brown looked up, forlornly holding up an empty knife in one hand and a loaf of butterless bread in the other, the camera slowly zooming in to his almost-teary face and trembling bottom lip as sad violin music played in the background. Andy pulled a switch and an avalanche of margarine landed atop him.

In the quickflash storm of I-Can't-Believe-it's-Not-Butter, Brown's hand poked through to reveal a very buttery thumbs-up.

"Well, we do have a replacement," Andy mused. "But...but I think you might not like him very much."

Smith hit Brown in the head with an iron mallet just as he emerged from the depths of the butter mountain, the evolutionary Agent tendency to hit emerging things over the heads with iron mallets stemming from unknown causes...well, no, just the fact that the Machines' ancestors were the primordial carnival Wack-A-Moles.

"Look, I have to deal with cross-dressing, drunken Spanish exclamations, thermonuclear explosions, Russian ducks, every possible fart, shit and poop joke known to man, rabid Socialists, Idaho red potatoes, guns whose bullets make people lose weight, purple hair dye, punk butterflies on motorcycles, Bill Gates alter egos, Miley Cyrus, nickel taxes on blinking, the IRS, stuffed pink bunnies, getting sugar high, relentless boredom and subsequent wanton destruction, falling down escalator stairs that go up, unpaid electric bills, getting kicked in the nads by a little kid every seven chapters, Jersey Shore Macbeth productions, a dumbass neighbor named Thomas who can't even be bothered to shorten his name to Tom, taco stands, coffee, fanfiction matches, lengthy government propaganda speeches that aren't even factually consistent, the DMV, hocking noogeys, getting drunk, a half-baked Mister Rogers, a growing stash of pancakes and syrup underneath my bed, bad singing that destroys half the world, Chris Cornell, Penelope Cruz, Russell Crowe, a myriad of famous names tossed willy-nilly, bulls that have 'fight the Burger King power' tattoos on their butts, soap-opera virus purging, and dead Keanu Reeves stunt doubles on a daily basis," Smith said. "What makes you think I won't be able to handle this sucker?"

Andy shrugged and pointed behind him, indifferently walking away from Smith's reaction.

"Drink more," nodded Agent Thompson from the make-up chair.

Smith's infuriated screams pierced the heavens with their blazing shrill; meteorologists all over the world reported a seventy percent chance of dead angel showers coming in and crashing giant ten-foot solid gold harps over your Hummer.

"Oh, for the love of GOD!"

…

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**...**

_I was hungry when I wrote this, tee hee. Oh, now it's dinnertime. YAY DINNERTIME! Let's EAT! Oooo chicken, potatoes, stuffing, beets and cinnamon doughnuts, yum, yum. XD_


	12. The TRUE Matrix

_A/N: Okay. Now it is all out of my system. This is probably the longest chapter you will ever read from this story. Enjoy! ^.~_

"**Pointless Agent Insanity! Part X:**

**The TRUE Matrix"**

**Prologue**

The middle of the room rang with the sound of plastic clicks and muttered oaths. Brown sat at a computer in the far left corner, but his eyes were fixed on a 16 inch TV screen placed in the center of the room. Jones sat on the floor, busily playing _Shadow the Hedgehog_ for the Nintendo GameCube. Thompson was tied, bound, gagged with a sock, weighed down with cement blocks to a folding chair and forced to keep Smith company in the living room whilst watching his favorite soap operas, much to the content of all three Agents.

"I see no, hear no evil," Jones sang, rhythmically hitting the A button, "black writing's on the wall, unleash a million faces, when one by one they fall..."

To bring you up to speed onto Jones' progress, Shadow the Hedgehog was now Super Shadow, facing the last boss, and vastly running out of time.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck," Brown said, squirming as he pointed to the TV screen, "GET HIM! GET HIM NOW!"

"I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!" Jones screamed back.

"CHARGE YOUR ATTACK! YOU FORGOT TO DODGE THAT PIECE OF DEBRIS! THAT'S GONNA COST YOU 20 RINGS! SHIT, JONES! YOU WON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO REACH HIM!" Brown shrilled.

"TELL MY MOTHER I LOVE HER! BANZAI!" Jones shrieked, suddenly executing a tricky chain of moves.

"Let me show you my TRUE power!" Super Shadow bellowed onscreen. He turned a brilliant gold and charged right through the boss; the boss screamed. Now there was only one more direct hit to go.

"HOLY SHIT!" exclaimed Brown joyously. "YOU ARE DA MAN, JONES!"

"I _AM_ DA MAN, MOTHAFUCKER, I ALMOST DIED BACK THERE!" Jones screamed back, despite the fact that the two were facing each other from less than 11 inches away.

Smith burst open the door, fitted in a white fluffy bathrobe, pink hair curlers, pink bunny slippers and a green facial mask. Strangely enough, he was still wearing his sunglasses, for Smith always wears his sunglasses at night...sunglasses at night, sunglasses at night, I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can see the light that's right before my eyes, while she's deceiving me, she cuts my security, has she got control of me, so I turn to her and say, I wear my sunglasses at night, I wear my sunglasses at night...whoops. Random '80s relapse, sorry.

Smith put his hands on his hips.

"Can't you two keep it down? Gawd, I'm TRYIN' to watch my soaps here, but all I've been hearing is, _Burn the town down! Don't do any more evil, you'll deduce your Hero Points! What does pressing a 'self-destruct' button do? Why can't I just shoot Sonic in the face? Where did all the Doritos go?_"

Unfortunately, no one was listening to him after Thompson passed out from watching soap operas.

"Yeah, Shadow! Kick hish ash!" Jones whooped.

Smith, remembering the horrors the English majors suffered in chapter one, cleared his throat very appropriately. "I believe you meant to say 'kick his ass'," he said.

Jones did not look up, transfixed by the TV screen. "No. I meant to say kick hish ash."

Smith unplugged the GameCube cord from the wall just as Jones dealt the death blow. Brown fell out of his chair, having suffered a case of Acute Bad Video Game Playing Witness syndrome.

"Aw, you are a complete and utter ashhole shometimesh, Agent Schmithsch," Jones grumbled.

"Why the hell are you adding a 'sch' sound to the ends of your words?"

"Shutsch upsch bitchsch, I ish notsch," said Jones.

"I see. You've been hanging out with Sean Connery and Nigel Terry again, haven't you?" Smith asked.

"Go to Hellhopenfhagenfwar!" Jones screeched, pouting very Scottishly.

All of a sudden, in the sullen quiet that had descended upon the trio, the SpongeBob wristwatch that Smith had received for his birthday rang: _F is for friends who do stuff together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere and any time at all–_

Smith, glancing nervously at the audience, smiled and promptly cut off his wrist with a chainsaw. Two seconds later the chainsaw spontaneously combusted from the sheer friction of metal on friendship. The wretched song continued to play. Smith regenerated his hand but the vile thing was still there, blaring its hideous chime. After submerging his wrist in a vial of nitric acid for the third time, he finally noticed the hour.

"OH, SHITTAKE MUSHROOMS!" he shrieked, throwing off his bathrobe only to reveal his full suit lying underneath, much to the chagrin of many a Matrix fangirl, since, in those days, it was physically impossible to see an Agent naked. Now, let me warn you, my fellow fangirls, Agents are like Russian dolls, pretty to look at and fun to play with, rather sweet but hollow in the head; and, of course, you can try to..._ahem_...strip them of their layers all you want, but the same damn suit and tie business keeps popping out from underneath. Take it from me...it's just not fun. I mean, I'd rather be standing in line at the DMV waiting for my quota to be processed, it's so pointless. You'd just be sitting there for three hours straight, going, _Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Where do you guys get all these suits from anyway? Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn, this one is dry clean only too. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn..._

"We're late for our movie shoot again!" Smith said, totally missing my innuendo in the midst of his panic.

"Whoa," said Brown and Jones as they were hastily rushed into the car. "What now?"

"We're starting a movie," Smith explained, his eyes dark with sobriety as he started the engine in the rain. "And an epic one at that...fuck."

**Main**

The car pulled up into the restaurant parking lot.

Jones and Brown were having a petty argument, much to Smith's diminished peace of mind.

"I did not!" Brown said.

"Nuh-uh, you did. You called me fat!" Jones pouted.

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too and you know it, you twig! You think I'm fat!"

"All I said was, _Did you like that episode of Rachel Ray today?_ Gawd, you gain two pounds and all of a sudden you're so sensitive about your weight!"

"Ah HA! So you ADMIT YOU THINK I'M FAT!"

"Shut up!"

Smith tossed a chewy toy for them to play with and closed the car door. "You two stay in the car. Now, I have a couple of rules you must follow while I am gone."

"Awwwwwww, but Moooooooom," the two Agents whined, fidgeting in their seats as they took turns squeezing the chewy toy.

"Rule Number One," Smith said. "I know that Pepsi and Mentos are an interesting combination, but do not blow anything up with them unless you are prepared to vacuum the inside of the car seats and get sucked into Narnia just like we did last time. Rule Number Two: Do not switch each other's bodies. God knows how that happened, but with you two, I suppose anything is possible."

Jones shuddered, hearing Brown's taunting voice ringing from the depths: _Stop hitting yourself! Stop smacking yourself upside the head with this here frying pan! Stop kicking yourself in the nads! Stop setting yourself on fire! Stop beating yourself against this brick wall! Stop watching these eighty-two episode marathons of Oprah!_

"...Rule Number Three: Do not kick, punch, scratch, tear, pierce, shred, detonate, decimate, annihilate, maul, eradicate, mar, ruin, spraypaint, defecate, or else defile or destroy anything within the planetary radius," Smith said. "Do you understand me so far?"

"Yes, ma'am–sir–Justin Timberlake," Brown and Jones said obediently.

"Good. Oh, I almost forgot the most important rule—Rule Number Four," he said. His voice gained a dangerous edge as he pointed to the ignition. "This, my sirs, is called the ignition. You are to never, under ANY circumstances, touch it. It is the one thing you never touch. You can touch matches, toxins, forks in toasters, open electrical sockets, explosive substances, and nuclear waste, but the ignition is explicitly dangerous to your health. Think of the ignition as my sunglasses: you touch Smith's sunglasses without his written permission, you die a slow, horrible, painful, black roasting death by means of Smith cooking you for dinner."

Silence met him.

Then, a long moment later, Jones raised his hand.

"Yes, Jones?"

"Are we gonna be tasty? 'Cause Jones can get awfully bland without a pinch of oregano," Jones said.

"NO!" Smith roared, slamming the car door. "And remember to behave!" he screeched as he saw the two of them press their noses to the back window like eager puppies.

Jones and Brown drooled and wagged their tails.

**…**

Smith sat at a lone table in the restaurant, reviewing the plan. Cypher was willing to surrender Morpheus to them; only Morpheus knew the codes, he had claimed. They would apprehend him, and then the process would begin. Tapping into such a dimwitted mind was going to be easy—once they inevitably broke him, they would obtain the codes...

...to download mp3s for free.

Smith smiled to himself. Once they successfully downloaded the free mp3s, they would connect their iPod dock to the Zion frequency and play bluegrass nonstop, thus eradicating the human city once and for all.

The perfect evil plan.

A waitress approached Smith with pen in hand.

"Oh, no, I'm waiting for somebody," he said.

"Well, is there anything you would like to drink in the meantime?" she smiled.

And thus, Smith thought about it...

**…**

**TWO MINUTES LATER**

**…**

Smith choked yet another wine glass, head-butting it and body-slamming it out the window. "Huzzah! Smith wins again!" Turning around, he waved his hand in the air. "Waitress! I need another opponent to crush!"

His victory cry rang in the depths of the dark. The wind blew in through the shattered window.

Everyone was quiescent, staring.

"What?" he said.

"For the love of God, no one was making a face at you! It was your own reflection!" screamed the waitress after ten solid minutes had passed.

"Oh," Smith began, casting a glance at the evil wine glass that had made a face at him. "So _that's_ why the devil was so strikingly handsome."

**…**

**MEANWHILE**

**…**

Jones and Brown stared at each other in the car.

"So," Brown said.

"So."

The two kicked their legs against the seats.

"I'm bored," Brown said, after ten seconds passed.

"Agreed."

"What are we to do?" the smaller Agent huffed. "We can't go anywhere to have our regular fun–Smith said not to touch the ignition."

"There's more than one way to be bored," Jones said wisely. He placed the fingertip of his index finger a millimeter away from the ignition. Brown, with eyes wide, tackled him, slapping him repeatedly in the face. "Are you crazy? What did I just tell you?"

Jones just smiled. He blinked his eyes and put his hands behind his back. "But I didn't touch it."

"You were going to!"

"But I _didn't_, did I, Agent Brown?"

Brown pulled back, a new realization dawning on him.

Jones dangled a lone silver key from his finger. "And if I did not physically touch the ignition, then we have nothing to fear."

"Just what are you saying?"

"Nothing," grinned Jones, turning the key, "nothing at all, really."

**…**

Cypher came in and took his seat at the four-star table. "Sorry I'm late," he said. "Whoa, what happened to you?"

Smith lay sprawled across the table, panting and hardly sober. He could barely dodge the car that Jones and Brown had driven through the restaurant _Dukes of Hazzard_ style. He lay amidst a sea of beer cans, empty shot glasses and broken wine coolers. His eyes, though hidden behind black sunglasses, were glassy and red-rimmed; his suit was torn and wrinkled, his tie swinging loose over his neck. When he spoke it wash inn shlurring shyllablesh like diesh.

"I'm as drunk as, um, a Metrobus," Smith said.

"What?"

"What?"

"No other Agents are with you, right?"

"No," Smith said, kicking Brown and Jones back under the table.

Cypher made a face; however, since his face always looked like it was making a face, the face-making cross-nullified the effects of his ugliness, and thus his face temporarily reverted to a normal-looking state.

"Holy crap, it's Mariah Carey," said Smith.

"Shut up," Mariah said indignantly, ripping off her costume to reveal Cypher underneath.

"Oh. It's just you again, Mr. Reagan," Smith sighed.

Ronald Reagan flashed a thumbs-up before flashing his cape and jumping out the shattered window as Super-Republican.

"Okay," said Cypher, blinking at the strange cutaway.

"So we have a deal, then," said Smith.

"No," Cypher said.

"No?"

"Yes."

Smith lifted an eyebrow.

"No no or yes no?" he asked.

"No yes," replied Cypher.

"That's not possible," Smith said. "Is it yes or is it no?"

"I told you, no yes," Cypher sighed.

"You can't have no and then yes," said Smith. "It is not logically possible."

"Yeah? Prove it!"

Smith, his superior Agent liver having absorbed all the alcohol in his system, straightened his tie and lifted a dangerous academic eyebrow.

"You're nullifying the value of the initial no," he said, drawing up a list of proofs. "If 'no' is p, and 'yes' is the inverse of p, then 'yes' is ~p. Therefore 'no, yes' is negating the value of both p and ~p to equal 1, respectively."

Cypher drooled at the impromptu logic lesson.

**...**

Sauntering inside the Hotel Lafayette, they hired a SWAT team to make certain that no rebel survived except for Morpheus and Cypher. Smith, Brown and Jones had split up, each accompanied by two units. Smith was in the lobby, Brown upstairs, and Jones in the basement. It was all going according to plan; it was all finally beginning to work. Oh, it was a beautiful thing, this evil flawlessness, the realization of their greatest dreams–

Smith reached for his back pocket. He frowned.

"Is something wrong, sir?" asked a sergeant. Smith dismissed him with a wave of the hand, and the units forged ahead in the darkness.

He reached around for his other pocket, fumbling around. Muttering incoherently to himself, he pulled out the white, lint-laden contents of both pockets. A panic began to rise. Growing quicker in his movements, he patted his sides, plunging his hands into every available, alas empty, pocket.

"MY USB CORD IS MISSING!" Smith mentally shrieked. "SON OF A BITCH!"

_Who could have taken it? _he asked himself. The USB cord was the one thing, besides the ignition and his sunglasses, that he protected with his life. Now it was gone. How could have someone taken it? They must have been incredibly daring, incredibly quick, incredibly intelligent to sneak it past Agent Smith's detection...or otherwise incredibly stupid.

Smith froze, blinking in the darkness. _Incredibly stupid..._

The phrase rang out from the ether of his digital mind.

"_Anderson_," he spat.

**…**

**THREE DAYS AGO**

**…**

_Thomas sat with Smith's laptop propped up on his knees, happily typing away. _

"_Ludacris," Smith said, watching the program type the word into a music search engine. "What the hell is that, some sort of band–"_

_All of a sudden, an explosive blaring came from the computer, the bass of which blew Smith and all of his household appliances and furniture out the window. In a rage he stomped up the apartment stairwell, busting the door open to an eradicated shell of a room. _

_In the middle of a smoldering crater sat a blissfully smiling Thomas, virtually untouched by the disaster._

"_How can you listen to that?" Smith shrieked. _

_Thomas fell over, a cardboard fathead sitting in his place with a note pinned to his nose, a note which read, in Magic Marker, _

_HAVE TO BORROW YOUR USB CORD FOR A WHILE. GONNA DOWNLOAD A FEW THINGS. WILL RETURN IT IN THREE DAYS. LOVE, TOMMY TUTONE. (A scratch appeared over "Tutone".) OH SHIT, THAT'S NOT MY NAME. I MEANT TOMMY ANDERSON. WELL, WHATEVER. YEAH. BYE. OKAY. BYE. YEAH. AT THREE O' CLOCK. OKAY. BYE. BYE. OKAY. I'LL BE THERE. GOT IT. BYE. YEAH. YEAH. OKAY. HANG UP THE DAMN PHONE ALREADY!_

**…**

Jones and Brown met at a vestibule, but Smith was still downstairs. Flashlights flickered between the four units and cast grey shadows on the walls.

"Where are they?"

"Brown?" Smith asked.

"Nothing."

"Jones?"

"Negative."

Smith frowned. No trace–

"Eighth floor. They're on the eighth floor," he said suddenly, picking up on an operator's call.

"What?" said Brown.

"I said eighth floor," said Smith.

"We can't hear you," Jones said, "there must be some kind of interception thrown our way."

"What?"

A flood of voices surrounded them: "Uhhhhh, yeah, I'd like a veggie pizza with no onions, and, ummmm, a two-liter of Sprite..." "_No te querr__é__ si no me quieres_!" "And on the third day, God said, _Oh no you did-n't, girl-friend! _And it was good, until Tasha decided to get her junk all up in dat, and then there be some smitin' in in da club dat night, y'all."

Smith looked up in the darkness. "What is that? Jones?"

"That isn't me," Jones said.

_Shit_, the trio of Agents thought simultaneously. This was a common problem Agents encountered: radio interception of their earpieces. The remedy was often embarrassing; it usually consisted of one Agent sitting atop another's shoulders with arms outstretched, acting as a transponder to find the appropriate signal.

"We could twist each other's ears like we usually do," offered Brown, twisting Jones' ear for demonstration. Jones straightened as if he were rendered mindless, promptly bursting into a Katy Perry song. "Shit!...I forgot to hit the seek button." Brown punched Jones' nose in, and Jones announced: "_Pffffffft...we have the plans...do you have our signal? Pffffft...I repeat, we have the plans to create the world's ugliest sounding pop music. Only then will the American defiants comply with our demands for a rhythm-and-blues dominated state. Operation Code Name: Miley Cyrus-itis._ "

"No, my sirs. We must settle this the customary Agent way–we will decide the matter like professionals," Smith said.

**...**

**TWO MINUTES LATER**

**...**

"Paper beats rock," Jones said, wrapping his hand around Brown's fist.

"You cheated!" Brown protested. "You were scissors but changed at the last second! I want a re-do!"

"Nuh-uh," Jones said.

"Fine, I'll be the transponder," Smith said, raising his hand as Brown sighed in audible relief.

"Uh, it's alright, you're the leader, you do everything anyway, so you don't have to," Jones said, feeling a little uneasy. "I got this."

"No, no, no, I'll do it. You didn't want to do it anyway," Smith replied.

"But what if I did want to do it? Would you have let me?" Jones said, a bit of panic rising in his voice.

Brown picked at his collar and looked at Smith, who was staring rather soberly back at Jones. The two of them seemed to know something he didn't.

"Yes, but you didn't want to, and it's just that Smith is, uh..."

"Smith is what?"

"Of course," mused Brown while rubbing at his chin, "he would be..ahem...a little lighter to carry on my shoulders anyway."

Jones' left eyelid twitched. "What? Are you calling me FAT, Agent Brown?"

"No! Whoever gave you that idea?" Brown punched Smith in the ribs and Smith smiled just a little too widely. "I'm not saying you're fat...just voluptuous. Curvy. Rubenesque. Real. Plus-size. You have a little meat on your bones. Substance. Hehe," he said, sweating.

Jones still looked suspicious. Smith whispered something in Brown's ear and Brown's eyes widened.

"What? WHAT DID HE SAY?" Jones shrieked.

"HE SAID THAT SOME GIRLS HAVE A LITTLE MEAT ON THEIR BONES, BUT YOU HAVE THE WHOLE FEAST TABLE GOING ON, MAH FRIEND," shrieked a drunken Cypher, swinging from a crystal chandelier up above. "YOU'RE SO BIG THE SUN TOOK ONE LOOK AT YOU AND SAID, 'DAAAAAAAMN!' YOU'RE SO FAT THAT WHEN YOU WENT TO SCHOOL YOU SAT NEXT TO EVERYBODY! YOU'RE SO HUMONGOUS, GOODYEAR WANTED TO FLY _YOU_ OVER THE SUPERBOWL!"

"I AM _NOT_ FAT!" Jones screamed.

"Sure, you aren't fat. You're GIGANTOR," Cypher shrilled. "When you step on a scale it says, '_To be continued!_' Your cereal bowl comes with a life guard! If I try to walk around you, I'll get lost! You take up sixty-two pages of your family tree!"

"Are you quite done with your jokes, Creeper?" Smith asked.

"Ah, wait, I think I got five more written down on a napkin somewhere, lemme look in my wallet first," Cypher said, reaching for his back pocket.

Jones glared at him, his bottom lip trembling. He hung his head but remained still, determined to keep his poise. The other two Agents patted his shoulders in consolation.

"You're not fat, Jones. In fact, you are very attractive," Smith said.

Jones sniffed hesitantly. "Is...is that true?"

"Of course," he said.

"We three are very attractive Agents," Brown said, suddenly sporting a five-foot thick pink feather boa, "in comparison to Agents like Jackson, Thompson, and Johnson, hehehe. That's why we have more fans than they'll EVER have. Ain't that right, Johnson?"

"Hey, shu'tha'fuc'up, man," Johnson slurred, falling off the chandelier. "It ain't my fault they put in tha'damm'green lighting in those, um, those Samsung commershials that clashes wit' mah dahrk eyes n'whah'not!"

"THIS COMING FROM ONE GUY WHO'S SO SMALL HE SCARES OFF MICE AND ANOTHER WHO CAN FRY AN ENTIRE SIX-CHEESE OMELETTE ON HIS FOREHEAD!" Cypher shrieked. Whirling around, Smith shot a Bazooka at the chandelier. It detonated in a radius spanning thirty-seven countries.

"Well, that's quite enough of that, old mates," he said coolly, restocking the extra fifteen Bazooka missiles inside his breast pocket. "Shall we be carrying on now?"

Jones and Brown exchanged worried looks; Smith only reverted to his Aussie tone of voice when he was on the brink of unleashing unspeakable rage. Of course, there was only one other time Smith used his Aussie voice–and that concerned the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.

They heard the story only a few times, a few rare, warning times.

"When I was young, the Matrix was nothing but the timely representation of Earth," Smith said, his hands folded calmly in lap. "The Architect was drunk when he created me, because at that time he was trying to retaliate at human life by creating Agents capable of engaging massive creatures in hand-to-hand combat. This basic training was supposedly reserved for some later time, like the Ice Age. However, he fell asleep at the controls and accidentally hit the 'Launch Agent Smith' button some 65 million years ago...and at first all I knew was utter isolation. There were no humans to kill, no Agents to be bored with, nowhere to go and nothing to do.

"So quite naturally I became a dinosaur farmer. At first it was good. Without humans it seemed peaceful, but that peace was a lie, a damned lie, an utter_ lie_. The entire land was nothing but dinosaurs, dinosaurs far and wide, dinosaurs traversing the land, dinosaurs crawling out the wazoo, dinosaurs jumping you in the parking lot for your extra twigs and blackberries, dinosaurs prank calling you all the time, dinosaur telemarketers eating up all 300 of your prepaid minutes, dinosaurs going door to door trying to sell you weird Tupperware products, dinosaurs eating up all the Jell-O and Mac and Cheese in your house, dinosaurs breaking your windows with baseballs, dinosaurs spying on you when you're taking a shower, dinosaurs hiding in your alphabet soup, dinosaurs starring in horrible Broadway musicals, dinosaurs smoking in 'No Smoking' areas, dinosaurs parking in all the good spots near the front of the store, dinosaurs working at tech support for Microsoft–my God, it was lawless, horrid, vile, awful...those damn mastodons wouldn't stop taking dumps the size of boulders in my yard, the pterodactyls were always bitching about how loud their kids were chirping, and the T-Rex wouldn't fetch the stick as he was told...so one day, I got even...

"I crushed them all with a giant meteorite. Fortunately, I was the only one to survive because the rest were too stupid to jump behind the bushes, which was the only form of protection back then, and, I mean, they all just _stared_ at it, the Darwinian dumbasses, and they were all, _What is this pretty red thing hurtling towards us?_"

It was now that Smith would get a glimmer of victory in his eyes.

"Now it's the Age of Agents, baby, the Age of AGENTS! How does it feel to be my bitches now, fueling my car _and_ electric with your lil' coallized asses? Yeah, that's right, you pterodactyl bastards, try to lay your freakishly monstrous eggs in my yard now! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

**...**

"Damn dust," Switch coughed, drawing up her collar. "This hotel is over fifty years old and they couldn't even bother to put down a layer of Mr. Clean or two?"

"Speaking of Mr. Clean, here he comes now," Apoc said.

Morpheus whirled around. "Cypher! Where were you?"

"Nowhere," he said, pricking his replica blow-up doll with a pin. "I was here all this time."

Morpheus peeked his head out the door, closing it with extreme caution. He tiptoed to the pipeline and crawled in through the hole in the wall. "All right. Are we ready to squeeze into this impossibly small and dangerous crawlspace?" he asked.

"All set," Thomas said, strapping on his scuba diving suit.

Morpheus chuckled. "Good, Neo, you are learning much." Looking up, he sighed. "Why couldn't you all have been as smart as Neo?"

The other rebels stared at Thomas, who picked his nose with the snorkel and roasted it over an open flame he had started in the toilet bowl.

"Yeah," said Trinity. "_Smart_."

**…**

The rebels dropped in quietly through the wall—well, if you take "quietly" to mean that on the way down they hit two ducks, five crinkly bags of chips, three death metal radio stations, seven jackhammers, four puppies' tails, nineteen squeaky floorboards and Eminem, then yes, they proceeded quietly, without detection.

A soldier appeared on watch, looking around the room. He was about to leave when Morpheus' foot hit a pipe and some dust poured down onto Switch's and Cypher's head.

"Uh, uh, uh, SNEEZE!" Cypher screamed, unable to sneeze.

The soldier froze, focusing his light on the wall.

"SNEEZE!" repeated Cypher.

"Bless you," said the soldier.

"Um...thank you?"

"You're welcome," said the polite soldier to the strange disembodied voice emanating from the wall. "Have a nice day."

He walked off, leaving the other rebels to stare down at Cypher.

"I...have allergies," he said, sweating. "From this wall. Yeah...that's it. Wall allergies." He rubbed his finger under his nose. "Real sneezie-sneezie stuff, y'know?"

Satisfied with this half-assed explanation, the rebels were about to continue their descent when Smith's fist plunged into the wall, gripping Thomas' neck until the knuckles turned white.

"Whoa, I've never seen an Agent that pissed," Apoc said, squinting to see but failing to find any visual foothold. "He seems like he wants our boy to suffer, the bastard."

"Yeah, he really looks like he got a grudge," Switch said.

"Sneezie-sneezie, lemon squeezie," replied Cypher intelligently.

"THOMAS!" Smith shrieked, choking Thomas through the wall. "WHERE THE HELL DID YOU PUT MY USB CORD? I LET YOU BORROW IT AND NOW I CAN'T DOWNLOAD MY MP3S!"

"DID YOU CHECK ON TOP OF THE BASIN?" Thomas screamed, seemingly in spite of the fact that an iron fist was crushing his windpipe."THAT'S WHERE I PUT IT!"

"IT'S NOT THERE!"

"AIN'T MY FAULT YOU'RE MESSY!" Thomas shrieked. "POWER SLIDE TIME, GUYS!"

He and the others slid down the wall–that is, everyone except for Morpheus, who was arguing the finer points of CDs over online downloads with Smith.

"CDs all the way! _Never surrender your musical compromise for free online streaming!_" Morpheus cried.

"The great Morpheus," said Smith, smirking slightly, "so we finally meet."

Morpheus, realizing that he was making an impassioned speech to a random fly that landed in the dirty toilet bowl, shrugged and turned around. "And you are?"

"Celine Dion."

"Really?"

"No. A Smith. Agent Smith," Smith said. "And I mean the English surname Smith, not those damn Irish variant Smythes who think they're SO clever by changing two vowels. I mean, if I wanted two extra vowels, I'd just go on _Wheel of Fortune_! Am I right?"

Morpheus blinked.

"And no, I'm not listed in the phone book, but, given all the Smiths in Australia alone, if I was, I'd be on page 8760, right next to Steve's Chiropracting," Smith said, wistful that he had no paper estate in his name. He straightened his tie to cover up his rising sadness at the prospect. "Therefore, in conclusion, I am not Celine Dion, although I did claim I was."

"You two look the same to me," said Morpheus.

"Of course I do, I'm a middle-aged American-born suburbanite, what else am I supposed to look like, some kind of long-haired elfin lord OH SHIT THAT HURT," Smith shrieked, rubbing at a welt forming on his left eye. He straightened, alert; his unprotected eye narrowed dangerously. "So the great Morpheus wishes to dance? We'll dance, little man...oh, _we'll dance._"

**TWO SECONDS LATER**

Starring in the Australian production of _Grease_, Morpheus sported a curly blonde wig as Sandy and Smith a black leather jacket as Danny, as the two foes sang "Summer Lovin'" onstage.

"No, Morpheus!" Tank screamed, weeping uncontrollably for the fate of his captain.

**...**

**MEANWHILE, IN THE HELICOPTER ON THE WAY TO THE MULPHA BUILDING**

**...**

"Wheeeeeeee," said Jones as he crashed two toy helicopters together. "Ba-doosh! Bang! Booooooom! Bwhoaaaaaaaow! Ka-boossssshhh! Ka-bowwwwww! Blammm! Kraaaooowwwssshhh!"

The pilot whirled around.

"For the love of God, will you _please_ stop making those crashing noises, it's really distracting m–AAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHH!" he screeched, getting hit in the forehead with a toy helicopter. "Whew," he breathed, returning to the controls, "at least I didn't lose consciousness and we didn't cra-AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" He picked up his coffee mug and saw that it was empty. "MY COFFEE CUP! IT IS EMPTY! Oh well, I'll just have some juice instead. Mmm, I sure do lo-**OH MY GOD!** THIS IS GRAPE JUICE! I TOLD YOU, I WANTED APPLE!" he screamed, throwing the unwanted juice box out the window and punching a hole through an apple with a straw, "ah, that's much better. Now that there are no more distractions, we are ALL GOING TO DIE," he shrieked, covering his eyes, "TURN OFF THAT SCARY MOVIE! I HATE SCARY MOVIES!"

Jones and Brown blinked. They blinked again and resumed watching _Care Bears._

**_..._**

Morpheus sat in a hard fold-up chair, hands bound with rubber bands that cut off the circulation to his fingers and made them kind of tingly. _Oh, the perpetual kind-of-tingliness_, Morpheus thought, closing his eyes. This truly was the worst torture the Agents had ever come up with.

Smith stood at the window, staring pensively ahead. Brown injected a serum into Morpheus' neck; Jones tapped something on a computer.

"Did you ever just stare at it," Smith began, "its beauty, its genius...billions of people just living out their lives...oblivious."

Brown looked at Jones, alert.

"Oh God," Jones whispered. "Here comes the whole dinosaurs and viruses speech again! Do it! Do it now!"

Brown snuck up from behind Smith and pushed him out the window as he was peering down.

"Dangerous Skyscraper Push!" he squealed. "Dangerous Skyscraper Push" was another favorite game of the Agents, whose pastime included watching each other plummet to the earth Wile E. Coyote style. There were always bets brewing that an Agent could perform multiple feats at a rate faster than he or she could fall from a large height. You thought that Agent White just fell from the plane in _Enter the Matrix_ after Niobe kicked him off? No; he fell out after Johnson pushed him, setting out to prove an exasperated claim he made earlier that morning, waiting in line at Tim Hortons, that he could fry an egg faster than he could fall out of a plane—this claim was false. He could hardly steady the gas burner, what with all the geese and seagulls and ducks getting up in his grill, so he had just made blueberry pancakes with freshly sliced oranges, toast, oatmeal, and coffee with cream while reading the business section of the New York Times instead.

Brown spit out the window as Smith fell. It was a cold day, despite being sunny and snowless—it was winter in Australia, actually–and his spit solidified into an icicle that poked Smith in the eye.

"Bullseye!" Brown cried.

"Aw, COME ON! I got my sunglasses professionally buffed yesterday, son!" Smith groaned, rubbing at his sunglasses with his shirttail. "Shit...this scratch is pretty deep. This is gonna cost me an extra fifty bucks at Lens Crafter's." Looking up, he flipped off a mischievous pair of Agents who snickered as they threw raw eggs and eggplant at him."!"

It took Smith forty-five minutes to get back up to the top floor, the time during which he busied himself listening to classical violin remixes of Billy Joel songs on his iPod. Stomping into the room, and, much to the chagrin of the unit directors, proceeded directly to remove his sunglasses and earpiece and seize Morpheus' head with enraged hands.

"What. Are the codes. To download free mp3s," Smith panted, out of breath from climbing all one million and twenty-two point five stairs...point five since he tripped on stair number one million twenty-one, fell down the entire stairwell, rolled out into the street, all the while cursing to all religions and several brands of sports drinks, had to reenter the building through the front and begin again. "You are going to tell me, or you are going to die."

Morpheus lifted his head. "What's behind door number three?" he asked.

"What?" Smith glared at his cohorts. "What did I hear him say?"

Brown and Jones shrugged.

"Is...is this guy for real? I just said he's going to tell me the codes or die, and he wants to know what's behind door number three!" He turned to look at Morpheus with a mixture of fury and confusion, shaking the head in his hands about wildly. "Are you...are you really shittin' me right now?"

"No, no shittin'," said Morpheus. "I always wipe."

Smith smacked himself in the face.

"I knew we should have kidnapped Will Smith instead," he said.

**...**

**MEANWHILE, ON THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR**

**...**

Morpheus gulped, sweating.

"What are they doing to him?" Thomas asked.

"They're hacking into his mind," Tank said.

"Find anything yet?"

"Nope. Just socialism, tacos, and continuous images of Niobe in a red bikini running along the Cancun beach in slow-motion," Tank said, drawing on the screens for information.

"It's not likely they'll find anything for days," Trinity said. "So we should be safe."

"Well, we better go get him anyways. I need to sharpen my kick-ass skills," said Thomas, looking down at the five crew members he had just killed to sharpen his kick-ass skills.

"Wakey, wakey, sleepyheads," Trinity said, shaking their body-bags. "Aw, you sons of bitches, of course Morpheus lets YOU sleep in, while Trinity has to run around doing all your dirty work! Yeah, Trinity knows what you're up to! And, personally, Trinity does not approve!"

"Hehe, yeah, wakey wakey," Thomas sweated, partly because Trinity did not know that he killed them, and partly because recently Trinity had taken a liking to referring to herself in the third person.

Ducking around her, he ran to the downloading dock.

"Wait, Neo! Trinity wants to play, too," Trinity said.

"NO! NO GIRLS ALLOWED," Thomas said, suddenly nailing a wooden treehouse door to the operator's chair. Trinity ran up and knocked on the door. He slid open a rectangular eyehole.

"Password?"

"Skateboarding unicorn ninjas."

"Damn it," he said. "Okay, you can play."

Unfortunately, Thomas hadn't learned the correct place to walk to in the Downloading Construct; thus the gun racks smacked into him at five hundred and seventy-eight miles per hour.

"Hehe," chuckled Tank, typing away. "Take _that_ for spitting out my cooking, bitch!"

"Oww," he said, crawling back to Trinity. "Wait," he said, feeling something strange that he fell on in his back pocket. Taking it out, he held it before him in awe. "Hey look, I do have Smith's USB cord."

"We're going in," Trinity said.

A flash of green light descended into the Matrix, and the lobby fell into place around them.

Looking at the security cameras, Thomas smiled and waved. "Come on, Trin, let's raise some HELL! I'm turning on the sprinklers, even though it's not evening yet," he said, turning the building's garden hose counterclockwise. "Tee hee."

**…**

**MEANWHILE**

**…**

Water burst into the room.

"Is it evening yet?" Morpheus asked as a spray-mist hit him in the face. Soaking wet, the Agents looked around them with curious expressions.

"Why the hell does this office building have sprinklers?" Smith asked.

"So that the building does not catch fire, sir," Jones explained.

"Yeah, but—WHY LAWN SPRINKLERBLURRRRBEB?" Smith screamed.

Jones, always prepared for such events, opened his umbrella and put on his trusty arm floatation devices. Brown, hating water, cringed and appeared to be in pain. Smith stopped to look up, sensing something.

There was a low rumble. The earth quaked; the lights sputtered out. Chairs and desks toppled over, and the Agents tumbled around in the dark wet. A great cataclysm appeared to move over the earth; the sky grew dark, and booms erupted across the ground. Taking shelter underneath a desk, the Agents shielded themselves against pieces of falling debris and waited.

Then there was a sudden calm. The rumbling ceased; the messy room was quiescence. One by one the Agents crawled out from beneath the desk, slowly, cautiously, curiously, then stopped in their tracks, met by a sight too grand for words.

Morpheus had grown a '70s afro, complete with curly sideburns.

"Who knew? All this time, all I needed was a little watering," he said, petting his new luscious hair.

The Agents stared at him for two hours straight.

"Oh no, I'm MELTINNNNNNNNNG!" Brown screeched when the sprinklers kicked in again, dropping to the floor.

"What! Why are you melting?" screamed his cohorts.

"I'm made of pure sugar, I'm so sweet," Brown said. Jones looked once at Smith, then smacked Brown in the face with an SUV.

"Okay," said Smith. What was left of his patience was growing as thin as Wheat Thins...and in those days Wheat Thins were pretty thin, yessir they were. "Since you just knocked out our dimwitted companion here, you can be the one to find them and destroy them!"

Jones touched his earpiece but, strangely enough, did not disappear.

"Jones," Smith said.

Jones was still touching his earpiece.

"Jones."

Jones did not disappear yet.

"JONES!"

"I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world, wrapped in plastic, it's fantastic!" Jones sang, taking out his waterproof earbuds. "Eh? What'd you say?"

**...**

A lone soldier, eating his lunch in the cockpit of a helicopter, watched on as Thomas and Trinity fought waves upon waves of SWAT soldiers. "NOOOOOO!" he screamed in horror as Trinity threw a knife straight into the forehead of his best friend, "My wife forgot to pack my Pepsi again!"

In a wave of electricity, Jones appeared next to the soldier, Pepsi in hand.

"Oh, thanks, Fiona," the soldier said, taking the Pepsi.

"MY PEPSI!" Jones shrieked. "What do you THINK you are doing?"

"Oh, nothing much, just sitting in a helicopter completely unarmed watching two strangers kill all of my buddies right before my eyes," the soldier said, munching happily on his peanut butter and jelly.

"Why are you talking like that?"

"This is my normal speaking voice!" the soldier beamed. "Welcome to Movie Phone! Please make your selection now!"

"The Matrix," said Jones.

"I'm sorry, please repeat the name of your selection!" said the soldier.

"The Matrix."

"I'm sorry, please repeat the name of your selection!"

Jones gritted his teeth. "The MATRIX."

"I'm sorry, please repeat the name of your selection!"

"THE MATRIX!" the flustered Agent screamed.

"I'm sorry, please repeat the name of your selection!" the soldier said, smiling obliviously as Jones wrapped his hands around his windpipe and repeatedly slammed his head against the helicopter window and the controls. "Please repeat the name of your selection while you are killing me!"

"THE. FUCKING. MATRIX. THE. MAY. TRICKS."

The soldier was silent, staring at Jones.

"You have selected _Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle!" _he announced before promptly dying. "Thank you for choosing Movie Phone! This is your announcer, signing off of Life!"

"Ugh," grunted Jones. He got out of the helicopter. Upon witnessing the Agent's steady approach, Thomas screamed and dropped his pair of M-16s: "_Trinity!_"

"What!" Trinity shouted.

"Oh, nothing," Thomas said, winking at her beneath his sunglasses. "I just wanted you to see how FAT this Agent was."

Jones' ears perked. "Eh?"

"Ah, yeah, sure, he's in shape. If round is a shape," Thomas said.

Jones' eyes narrowed in the white sun; and an understanding passed between him and Thomas.

"I'm gonna open a can of whoop-ass if you don't stop calling me names," Jones said.

"Chicken! Chicken! Bwocka, bwocka, bwocka!" Thomas said, suddenly bursting into the Chicken Dance.

"THAT'S IT! TIME TO OPEN A CAN OF WHOOP-ASS," Jones shrieked.

"Uh-oh," said Trinity.

Jones sat down with a can of soda nestled in his lap. The can read WHOOP-ASS.

"You have got to be kidding Trinity," Trinity said, feeling an episode of involuntary convulsion coming on.

"Naw, I'm just thirsty," Jones said. "It's hard work being called all sorts of names. Unnnnhh...hey, can you help me open up this can of Whoop-Ass?"

Being generous, Trinity attempted to opened the can of Whoop-Ass and was promptly roundhouse kicked in the face by something inside the can.

"Ha, ha! I bought the wrong brand of Whoop-Ass," Jones said, waving the can in the air. "I got Chuck Norris Flavor, suckers!"

He ran away as Trinity lay there bleeding and Thomas did the Chicken Dance in Spanish.

**...**

"This is gonna be like fun, just like Halo," Thomas smiled. "Secret Agent man, secret agent man, da-nanana, da-nanana! They've given you a number, and taken away your name! Da-nanana, da-nanana!"

Trinity hit her head on the controls. For some reason, despite all of her logical arguments proving him otherwise, he constantly mistook any version of Agent 007 for Halo.

The helicopter rose to meet the office building.

"No," said Smith, the camera zooming in on his face as he witnessed the spectacle with incredulous black-rimmed eyes. "The pizza delivery guy just remembered that a medium beef taco wasn't included in our order and now he wants the extra $4.99! RUN!"

Thomas made a face behind the chain gun.

"Did you see that? Did you _see_ that?" Smith screamed, pointing in horror to Thomas.

"See what?" asked Brown.

"He made a _face_ at me! He made a face _at_ me! _**He **_made a face at _**me**__!" _Smith shrieked. "He hurt my feelings!" He turned to the helicopter, scribbling a note and attaching it with a paperclip to a bullet. He fired off the bullet and it pierced the engine: _I'm suing you for emotional trauma!_

"Oh,_ no_!" cried Thomas, gaping amidst the flood of gasoline in the cockpit, "there's absolutely _no way_ defense is gonna build up a solid case for me in time!"

Trinity stared at him.

"Just fire or Trinity will reduce your Happy-Happy Trinity Time back down to five minutes," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," Thomas said politely before drawing up the turrets and destroying everything in the room.

"Scatter!" Smith commanded. The trio of Agents shot out in different directions. Unfortunately, these types of bullets were the kind that wrapped around in circles, like the ones in the cartoons, so, in reality, Thomas was a perfect shot–one hundred and seventy-eight bullets were fired directly at Morpheus but not one of them actually contacted. They hit the doors, walls, windows and desks that surrounded him, instantly killing all the poor office workers that decided to come in for a mid-morning water cooler.

"WTF? Are the laws of physics really shittin' me right now? What in the absolute hell–is this fucking Looney Tunes?" Smith cried.

Thomas nodded.

The Agents collapsed, having a collective aneurysm.

"Well, that was easy," Trinity said. "Now let's get the old guy and go home."

Thomas looked at Morpheus.

"Is that...an afro?" he asked, squinting.

"Shut up, you two. First of all, I'm not old, I've always looked like a bemused middle-aged black man, even when I was a female Native American toddler. Second, yes, Neo, it IS an afro, how very observant of you. Thirdly, I don't want to leave, I'm very much enjoying—MY AFRO!" Morpheus screeched as his afro fell dramatically to the ground, smoking with a bullet hole. Scooping up the precious bundle of hair in his arms, he wept. "YOU KILLED MY AFRO! YOU KILLED THE ONLY LOVE I EVER HAD IN THIS WORLD okay I'll go now."

He walked across the air into the helicopter, pushing an outstretched Thomas away. Thomas and Trinity blinked, sharing a vague thought that they might be having a Pixie Stick-induced hallucination. Morpheus fell asleep in the cockpit for his daily mid-afternoon nap.

Trinity swung the helicopter away. However, the engine was still leaking gas, and they were quickly losing altitude.

"Land over there!" commanded Thomas.

"Shut up and let Trinity think, Gawd! Trinity knows what Trinity is doing when you're not bugging Trinity all the time!" Trinity screamed.

"Wait a minute," he replied, remembering something.

Thomas waved a hand in front of her, signaling for her to stop the helicopter for a moment. He reached for something in his back pocket. Dangling it out in front of him like a dead snake, he flailed it in front of the Agents' faces, even though he was more than forty feet away.

"Oh, and Smith!"

Smith looked up as Thomas pulled his ears and stuck out his tongue. "I still have your USB cord! Neener, neener, what a wiener!"

His screams of hysteria were drowned out by Thomas' megalomaniac laughter.

**...**

They ran into a subway station.

"You go first, Morpheus," Thomas said.

"Oh, of COURSE THE AFROLESS GUY GETS TO GO FIRST," Morpheus grumbled, picking up the phone. "Of COURSE HE GETS NO BEAUTIFUL, LUSCIOUS, CURLY AFRO TO TAKE HOME WITH HIM, BECAUSE HE CAN'T EVER HAVE ANYTHING NICE ANYMORE, OH NOOO HE DOESN'T..."

His complaints trailed off as he disappeared. Thomas hung up the phone.

"Trinity wants to tell you something, but Trinity doesn't know how," Trinity said, lowering her head.

The phone rang. Thomas looked at her as the train whipped by. It blew her hair about her face very dramatically.

"Everything has come true...everything but this," she said.

"Aw shit, Trin, I know we're not swimming in an Olympic blue raspberry Jell-O-filled pool with ten scantily clad girls waving pink fluffy pom-poms waiting on me hand and foot, but you don't have to be all depressed about it," he said. "We can still have our Happy-Happy Trinity Time without it!"

"Yeah, well, Trinity-Trinity is not feeling very happy-happy. Trinity is just gonna go home now."

Smith appeared behind her, reaching for something in his pocket. A click sounded as Trinity picked up the phone, dissolving in the instant of contact. Thomas stared, wide-eyed.

Smith whipped out his Nerf Water gun and a stream of water hit the phone booth.

"Neo," Trinity breathed. She turned to Tank. "He's not equipped for an epic water balloon challenge! You have to send Trinity back!"

"I can't," Tank said, passing the bowl of microwave popcorn to Morpheus.

**…**

**MEANWHILE**

**...**

Thomas glared at Smith as he tossed his Nerf Water gun away.

"Hello. My name is Zorro. You killed my father; now you must prepare to die," declared Smith.

Thomas blinked. "What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Oh. Wrong movie, sorry," Smith said, tossing his Spanish rapier and full metal armor away. "Well, I'm here to kill you anyway. Prepare to die, Mr. Anderson."

"What?" Thomas asked, already sitting in a coffin with his hands tucked neatly over his chest.

"Focus, Anderson! I had to go to psychotherapy because of you," Smith said. "Because of the negative psychological forces you exerted in my life..."

**...**

**IN A STRING OF RANDOM TRAUMATIC FLASHBACKS**

**...**

_"What are you doing in my house?" Thomas asked, walking in to see the dead body lying on the floor. He wore his business suit._

_"You… y-you…" the Agent sputtered._

_"You killed my stunt double," Thomas sniffed. "Named 'Keenan' or 'Keanu' or 'Kenny' or something weird like that. That ain't cool, dude. I paid him big bucks to watch over my shit while I was gone, you know that, right?"_

_Smith stared at him._

**…**

_Smith seized the controller and beat the game on Hard Mode in less than 0.00000005 seconds— 0.0003 seconds later than usual because he was feeling tired from slaying dragons._

_"This is not the purpose for which I enlisted your assistance, Mr. Anderson," Smith said._

_"Tommy," Anderson corrected, busily searching for the M&M he had shoved up his nose a moment earlier._

"_I wonder if the Wachowski Brothers are having a better time than this," Smith grunted._

**…**

_"WHAT IN THE FLAMING HELL IS THAT—oh it's just Mr. Anderson," Smith said._

_"Tommy," Anderson corrected._

_"Whatever. What the hell you want, Tom?" Smith grunted._

_"I'm here to bust you out," Thomas said._

_Smith shot up._

_"Really?"_

_"Naw."_

_Smith stabbed him in the neck with a chair._

**…**

_"My name is John Constantine; IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, I EXCISE YOU FROM THIS BODY!" Thomas screamed, bashing a vial of holy water over Jones' thick skull._

_"Wrong movie," said Smith._

_"Um," said Thomas. "Moo?"_

_Smith stared at him._

_**...**_

_Smith started involuntarily convulsing. Thomas tilted his head._

_"Why is your hair that color, strange man?"_

_"YOU STAINED IT PURPLE, YOU ARSEHOLE!"_

_Thomas frowned, spotting the box of hair coloring on the sink counter. Picking it up, he studied it for a moment. "No, no," he protested, pointing to the box's description, "here it says it's only a soft violet blend of red lavender subtly mixed in with the lush hues of blue forget-me-not…"_

_Smith glared the fires of hell and damnation at him._

_"So purple, yeah," he said, jumping out the nearest window as a Bazooka bombed his bathroom door._

**…**

"_Oh, and Smith!"_

_Smith looked up as Thomas pulled his ears and stuck out his tongue. "I still have your USB cord! Neener, neener, what a wiener!"_

**…**

"_Oh, and Smith!"_

_Smith looked up as Thomas pulled his ears and stuck out his tongue. "I still have your USB cord! Neener, neener, what a wiener!"_

**…**

"_Oh, and Smith!"_

_Smith looked up as Thomas pulled his ears and stuck out his tongue. "I still have your USB cord! Neener, neener, what a wiener!"_

**_..._**

**PRESENT DAY**

**...**

"That last one was literally fifteen minutes ago," Thomas said. "How could you have gone to your psychotherapist if it was only fifteen minutes ago?"

"I didn't."

"Why?"

Smith looked down. There was a small, dark smirk on his face.

"You know why," he said.

Thomas said nothing.

"Exactly, Mr. Anderson...that is _exactly_ it," Smith said, his eyes narrowing as he approached. "You _hurt _my feelings."

The light from the subway flickered.

"If it means anything, I'm sorry. Here is your USB cord," said the program, throwing the cord down onto the ground.

Smith looked at it.

"The webpage you requested is unavailable offline. To view this page, click Connect," he announced.

"What?"

"Oh, sorry," the Agent said, clearing his throat. "It's just that the Matrix's core network updated to Google Chrome, and it's having a few problems right now."

Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Google is the core network?"

"Yes. You have a problem with that?"

"Yes, actually, I do–GOOGLE PROMOTES CAPITALISM!" Thomas screeched, as if on cue.

"Good boy," Morpheus said, smiling evilly from the operator screen. Clasping his hands together, he tilted his head back and howled maniacally as Trinity hit a pan with a spoon in the background to make ominous, booming thunderstorm sounds."Hish training ish complete."

Tank turned around. "What did you just say?"

Morpheus cleared his throat. "I said, 'Hish training ish complete,' yesh, 'twas what did quoteth I."

"You meant to say _his_ training _is_ complete," Tank said.

"No. I meant to say _hish_ training_ ish_ complete," said Morpheus.

His super-grammar senses tingling, Tank's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"_His_...and _is_," Tank said finally.

"What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" Morpheus said; and, with this impetus being spoken, the two launched a massive sissy slapfight.

**...**

**BACK IN THE MATRIX**

**...**

A lone, unread, illusory piece of newspaper fluttered in the subway. It read, CONGRESS FINALLY VOTES FOR FREE HEALTH CARE. Smith and Thomas stared down each other _High Noon_ style.

A moment passed; knuckles were cracked, fingers drawn white and taut, itching over their respective guns. All was quiescence, an animalistic tension rising between the two: waiting, watching, feral, instinctive.

Smith sniffed slightly.

Thomas let one out.

"Um," said Thomas. "Sorry."

Smith coughed and waved his hands away from himself.

"Ayyuugghhff, you couldn't hold it in for a minute longer?" he gagged. "Hot damn, boy, what does Morpheus_ feed_ you?"

"Hot dogs and fibrous broccoli," said Thomas. "They give me an extra _jet boost_ when I get tired of flying, if you know what I mean."

My audience collectively slapped themselves in the face.

"Excuse me while I hock a noogey in this here trash can, you humans are DISGUSTING!" Smith said as he ran across the platform to throw up in the nearest trash can.

Thomas pouted indignantly. "Well, you're based off of a human-like avatar! It's not like YOU'RE so clean or anything!"

Smith's vomit, upon contact with the trash can, transmuted into giant crystal vials of Suave shampoo, Dove soap and Chanel No. 5.

"Alright, I'll give you that one," said Thomas.

"Okay," said Smith. "Are we ready to fight?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

"You go first; I'll watch you fight yourself so I know what to do when you finally realize you're punching yourself in the face," Thomas said.

"What?"

"Just shittin' you!" he squealed. "And no, I do not always wipe!"

He roundhouse kicked Smith in the face. There was a sickening crack.

"What was that? Why is the world so bright? Did I die?" Smith said, his exposed eye dilating in the light.

"Uh," Thomas said as he looked down.

"My SUNGLASSES! FIRST THE IGNITION, THEN THE USB CORD, NOW MY SUNGLASSES!" Smith screeched to the heavens. Returning to calm, he relaxed himself; and Thomas knew his intent grew deadly: "...I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson."

Snatching up Smith's discarded Nerf Water gun, Thomas shot out a stream of water at the Agent. Smith, in soaking retaliation, ripped out a water fountain pipe and sprayed the program with it. Streams of water clouded the air with grey mist in slow-motion; and many a spectator wishing to pee at this moment just got a little bit more uncomfortable reading these descriptions as Smith ripped open a fire hydrant, Thomas busted open a vending machine filled with water bottles and the two foes tossed urinating dogs like bombs between one another.

"You're empty," Smith said finally, smirking at Thomas' empty water gun.

"So are you," Thomas said.

Smith looked down at his curly-haired toy poodle, which looked up and blinked its round black eyes at him. Smith tugged at its tail, alas, to no prevail. "You're right," he sighed, tossing the poodle away.

"Yo, we're gonna have to do this old-school," Thomas said.

Smith cracked his neck, apparently accepting the challenge.

"Fo shizzle, Mr. Anderson."

"Free-style! I'm Slim Shady yes I'm the real Shady all you other Slim Shadys are just imitating so won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up," Thomas sang.

"I hate Slim Shady, and that's not even remotely old-school, you fool," Smith said, pointing out the critical flaw in his randomocity. Thomas fell over, weakened in his defense. "Y'all act like you've never seen a white person before!" he replied. Smith had to resist the urge to break his own leg at the hip and beat the program over the head with it.

"Ur just jealous b/c i rox ur sox and u sux, n00b," he said, suddenly speaking in text. "Come on, ill pwn u, b/3!"

"x3," said Thomas.

So the battle continued. Smith was all, _xO mr anderson_, and Thomas went all _xD u didnt capitalize my name u 8D_, and Smith was all, _WTF is a 8D_? and Thomas shrugged and said _idk, a dork i thinx,_ and Smith went all _liek ttly Mike Tyson_ over his ash, and Thomas went all _O.o ikr?_ and then was thrown in front of the train.

Smith, suddenly in the mood for uber-macho wrestling, placed Thomas in a death-grip headlock and waited for "the inevitable" to arrive. Unfortunately for him, the inevitable was running a bit late that day. He checked his SpongeBob wristwatch. It was 2:15. Shrugging, he held onto his headlock, and waited, and waited, and waited...

The two waited for five hours. Smith busied himself playing Minesweeper on his cell phone while Thomas painted his toenails pink with silver sparkle stars.

_The train has to come sometime. This is a subway, after all_, Smith thought.

Two minutes later the train arrived.

A large steak hoagie landed atop them, landing cleanly in two neat halves. Condiments fell neatly and perfectly in place on the concrete before them.

"Hehehe, subway, get it?" Thomas said. "Get it? Subway? Smith? Why are you putting that gun in your mouth? It's so dirty! People don't eat guns! That's a no-no, Smithy! Bad boy, no gun before dinner!" he said, setting the Desert Eagle down. "Here, have my half instead; I'm trying to lose some weight with all my diet cutbacks. Huh. What is this shiny metal thing on my sub? Ow! I chipped a tooth on a bullet. Where did all the onions go? Do you know? Will you please pass the mayonnaise?...Smith? Smith?"

Thomas looked about him. In the movie, it is he who flees Smith; but in reality, Smith was already swimming halfway across the English Channel.

**...**

Thomas' first two phone calls were left unanswered on the Nebuchadnezzar, where Tank and Morpheus were busy battling it out Dance Dance Revolution style. Trinity picked up the operator's headset on the third call. "Thank you for calling Trinity's Pizzeria, the best pizza-making pizzeria in this pizza-making town!" she chirped. "How may Trinity take your order?"

"Trinity? Where's Ta—oh, never mind! What the hell are you guys doing out there?"

"What do you think Trinity is doing?" she said. "Making pizza."

Thomas plunged his hand into the receiver and smacked Trinity through the phone.

"Get Tank!" he shrilled.

Tank picked up the headset. "Yeah?"

"Tank, I need a disguise. Preferably the standard," he said.

"Right—one Geisha kimono coming right up."

"Listen Tank, I haven't got much time—"

_Click. _

The phone, being of Verizon brand, dropped the call. "CURSE YOU, VERIZON!" Thomas howled.

Smith grinned. He knew how to tease the anomaly out of the crowd: "Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?"

Thomas stood up.

"There's the real Slim Shady," Jones screamed, "g_et him! I want an_ _autograph!_"

"Aw, shit," Thomas said, suddenly realizing that the Zionite disguise he was wearing was not the standard Geisha kimono, but a white bandana that wrapped around his forehead and a trucker's cap. He heard the operator snicker through the phone as he flipped off someplace in the atmosphere. "Fuck you, Tank!"

"I'm Slim Shady yes I'm the real Shady all you other Slim Shadys are just imitating so won't the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up," Trinity, Tank and Morpheus sang at the same time. Then, looking at one other suspiciously, they jumped into a cartoon cloud and directly proceeded to punch out one another's lights.

"I am so dead," Thomas said, hanging up the phone and running out of the phone booth. "I look like Eminem AND I forgot my spare stash of quarters at home!"

Being of the far superior Samsung brand, his cell phone rang.

"Neo," Tank said.

"I'm not talking to you!" Thomas huffed.

"You gotta listen, Neo!" Tank said. "There is an exit in room 303 of the Heart o' the City Hotel. You have to get there before they get you. Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Wait, don't hang up yet! Uh, Morpheus wanted to know if you could pick up some groceries on the way there, like some bread and eggs and milk?"

"Damn it!" Thomas shrieked. "What happened to the groceries I bought yesterday?"

"Yeah, um, don't get mad, okay, but we got drunk, had the munchies and ate them all while you were busy with your training programs...Neo. Neo. Neo? Yoo-hoo, you there? Neo? Come on, answer the phone, you little snot, you got a text message from your friend Julie on Facebook! She has a birthday this weekend! Did you get Julie a present, Neo? Oh, I bet it's a set of apple-cinnamon candles. Girls love generic shit like that. Neo? Neo? Hello? Nee-ooo?"

**…**

Following Smith's orders, Jones and Brown ran down the alleyway.

A runner came up beside them, smiling a little too widely.

"Hey there! Going for a stroll?" asked Tom Cruise.

Jones checked the customary Agent speedometer hidden inside his wrist. His speed read 80 mph. Jones and Brown gaped in unison: "But...you're just a human! How is it physically possible for you to run this fast?"

"Coke does wonders, my friends!" Tom Cruise smiled.

"You do DRUGS?"

"NO, YOU SICKOS!" Tom Cruise screeched, jumping over a cheetah. "I meant the soda brand, fools!" Whipping out a Coca-Cola, he swilled it down in three seconds flat, crunched it up and threw it behind him, causing the semi it contacted to detonate in a storm of carbonic acid. "That's the real shit, yes it is!"

Jones, annoyed, opened another Chuck Norris Flavor can of Whoop-Ass and left Tom Cruise lying in the middle of the street, unconscious and roundhouse kicked in the face.

**...**

Running for his life was getting a little boring. Thomas pushed aside all eighty pounds of his diamond encrusted bling, looked at his 24-karat gold wristwatch and yawned.

"I sure could use some uber-cool escape music right about now," he said as he ran down the hotel hallway. "Oh, I know!

"1, 2...1, 2, 3; yeah!  
In-slum-national, underground  
Thunder pounds when I stomp the ground  
Like a million elephants and silverback orangutans  
You can't stop a train  
Who want some? Don't come unprepared  
I'll be there, but when I leave there  
Better be a household name  
Weather man tellin' us it ain't goin' rain  
So now we sittin' in a drop-top, soaking wet  
In a silk suit, tryin' not to sweat  
Hits somersaults without the net  
But this'll be the year that we won't forget  
One-Nine-Nine-Nine, Anno Domini anything goes, be what'chu wanna be  
Long as you know consequences, to give and for livin'  
The fence is too high to jump in jail  
Too low to dig, I might just touch hell," he sang.

"Since when could you free-style _Bombs Over Baghdad_?" someone asked. Being the One, he had grown accustomed to answer any question of the likes with a standard, "I'm the One, bitch, I can free-style anything!"

Bursting open the door, Thomas rushed into room 303. Smith stood in front of him, Desert Eagle raised.

The phone rang.

The subsequent shot rang out in the quiet. Thomas looked down, pressing his finger to the bit of red that appeared in his stomach. Slowly, he lifted his finger to his lips and licked it.

"I told you I could free-style anything, but you didn't have to shoot me, you jealous bastard! You hit my secret stash of ketchup packets!" he screamed, spilling out large quantities of McDonald's packets from his stomach.

Smith made a noise of vague disapproval. His gun gleamed in the light that streamed in through the dirty yellow-paned windows. Bending over, he picked up his USB cord from Thomas' pocket, rising up with a supreme aura of triumph.

"Well, Mr. Anderson, at this point I am supposed to kill you, as goes protocol, but I am in a pleasantly sadistic mood today, and I don't want you to die right away. Besides, I don't want to get your blood all over my little pretty USB cord," the Agent said, clicking back the hammer. "So, before you die, do you have any last requests?"

Thomas thought for a moment, placing a finger on his lips. "Ummm...yeah. I want...two chocolate milkshakes," he said, smiling.

Smith blinked. Was Thomas growing _giddy_ at the prospect of this?

"What?"

Thomas held out his hands expectantly. "You said 'any last requests'."

"Yes, but–"

"I don't recall you saying_ a_ last request, or _one_ last request, or a _normal_ last request," Thomas said. "Two chocolate milkshakes. Now. Come on. Let's get less with the angry-twitchy and more with the chocolate milkshakeys."

Smith sighed in defeat, and two chocolate milkshakes materialized in each of Thomas' hands. Beaming a stupid smile, he placed his lips on the red plastic straw and began wolfishly slurping down the chocolate milkshake in his left hand. The sound was as nails on a chalkboard to Smith, loud and screeching; a few windows in the adjacent apartment broke from the sheer shrill of it.

"Mr. Anderson, are you quite done with your–"

Holding up an index finger, Thomas bent down and slurped some more. He slurped so hard he got a debilitating brain freeze, after which spending three hours and seventeen minutes in the emergency room removing an ice cube blockage lodged in his brain he was discharged back to the hotel room.

Smith looked up from his magazine.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

Thomas nodded. "Yeah."

"Good," Smith replied.

"Yup."

"Did you get my Get-Well card, Mr. Anderson?"

"The one with the pink teddy bears that sang Lady Gaga?" Thomas said. "I loved it!"

"Good."

The two were silent for a while.

"Well," said Smith, getting up, "shall I destroy you now?"

"Hold the phone on that, Smithy," said Thomas. "I forgot to get the crushed Oreo bits at the bottom."

Smith resumed reading his magazine as Thomas took an extra eighteen minutes to eat every last morsel of Oreo left in the cup. Another five minutes passed as he busily balanced the red plastic spoon on his nose and made a meticulous crown out of his Styrofoam cup. Later in the day, at some time approaching early evening, Thomas finished the chocolate milkshake in his left hand. Tossing the empty cup away, he turned to face the Agent with a resolute expression.

"Okay. Let's do this dying thing. Let's get it ON LIKE DONKEY KONG– "

Not looking up from his copy of _Reader's Digest_, Smith shot him seven times in the chest.

"And don't forget my right-hand chocolate milkshake," said Thomas.

Smith shot the chocolate milkshake.

"You _bastard!_ You killed him! _You killed my chocolate milkshake!_" Thomas screeched as he lay dying. Crawling over to the empty Styrofoam cup, he wallowed in the chocolate puddle and howled in agony, his trembling hands covered in Oreo blizzard gore. "No, don't die, Marty! You're going to live! You're going to live, goddammit, and we're going to have it all! We'll take that vacation in Maui just like you wanted, and we'll get remarried on the beach, and we'll ride all the rides at Fantasy Island, and I promise you, this time I won't throw up from the top car on the Ferris Wheel just to see how high up we are!"

Thomas died.

Jones and Brown walked into the hallway.

"Check him," Smith said.

Brown pressed his fingertips to Thomas' neck, then got up. "He's gone," he said.

Smith looked up; there in the hallway was an eerily empty silence.

"Oh, shit," he said. "Not the friendship memories now..."

**...**

_"Look, I'll help you hide from… __**them**__…" he sighed, stuffing her dead body into the ice cream freezer and thinking of all the innumerable ways he could use rusted medieval tools to disembowel the two absolute dimwits he had the misfortune of calling cohorts. "But you have to help me with something in return. Deal?"_

_"Deal," Thomas said. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and whined for sugary cereals as Smith pushed his cart down the aisle._

**_..._**

_And then they grew bored. Again._

_Because they had no one else to turn to for such times of ennui, the Agents went to the house of the notorious idiot Thomas Anderson._

_Some had said he was brilliant, one of the world's finest hacking minds, able to crack a code's logarithm in less than ten seconds. Others said he was horrendously stupid, unable to fall down the stairs without stopping to ask for directions and half a road map recalculated seven times from MapQuest on the exact coordinates as measured by his satellite GPS._

_That's why Thomas and the Agents got along __very __well._

**_..._**

_He walked with rhythm, with style, with spice… that is, until a stray strand of hair got caught in his eyes, and, screaming blindly, he tripped into the community nudist pool located exactly below the department store; and Jones, Smith and Thomas had a collective brain hemorrhage rofling and emoticoning in the 18-million hit YouTube video, "White Posa', Y'all Be Trippin', My Brotha'"._

**_..._**

_Smith's eyes lowered. He shut off the communicator, then crawled in between Jones and Thomas for naptime._

_"I don't know what is more disturbing," he whispered, "the fact that Mister Rogers is half-baked somewhere in a Colombian drug field or the fact that I almost get killed by a random potato every time I exhale through my left nostril."_

**_..._**

_"Who is this?" he asked._

_"He's a friend of Sure-Shits-a-Lot. His name is King-Fart-ur," Thomas said. "Sure-Shits-a-Lot and King-Fart-ur are best friends forever, just like us!"_

**_..._**

_"Who is this?" he asked._

_"He's a friend of Sure-Shits-a-Lot. His name is King-Fart-ur," Thomas said. "Sure-Shits-a-Lot and King-Fart-ur are best friends forever, just like us!"_

**_..._**

_"Who is this?" he asked._

_"He's a friend of Sure-Shits-a-Lot. His name is King-Fart-ur," Thomas said. "Sure-Shits-a-Lot and King-Fart-ur are best friends forever, just like us!"_

**…**

"Just like us," Smith said. He looked down at the dead Thomas, whose dead body read, in red Magic Marker, "Don't bother, ladies, I am dead. Unless you are into that. But I must warn you, being dead, don't expect me to call you back right away. Please leave a message at the tone. Beep."

"Good-bye, Mr. Anderson," Smith said.

As if on cue, his SpongeBob wristwatch began to play: _F is for friends who do stuff together, U is for you and me!_

"Oh, bloody HELL!"

**...**

**BACK ON THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR**

**...**

Morpheus, Tank and Trinity stared at Thomas' limp form.

"Oh God, you're not gonna make Trinity kiss him, are you?" Trinity sighed.

"Well, I vote myself out because I am the captain," Morpheus said. "Our relationship could get a little tricky...I mean, we're both dudes, and that would be cool, but, I mean, without a maid or something, we'd be utterly dysfunctional–male and female are qualities we all have, but we have too much of the male, so, for us, it'd bad cross-mojo, y'know? I mean, no one would be there to put the toilet seat down, and we'd be fighting for the remote all the time, and the beer cans would keep on piling up on the coffee table, and the vacuum would spontaneously combust from utter non-use, and neither of us would be willing to explain to our twelve year-old daughter why she is bleeding down there, and we'd both be getting drunk and no one would ever drive the ship again, and the cat would be our football when we get bored, and then we'd burn down buildings from our boredom, and nothing politically or culturally significant would get done because we're not feminists, and not to mention that the toilet paper would be perpetually nonexistent, and all of our marital disputes would be about killing each other over the Xbox network, and all of our romantic dinners together would be microwave mac and cheese–"

Trinity's eye twitched. She looked to her left.

"Um, someone could kiss him and pretend it was Trinity," she said, suddenly getting a brilliant idea.

"What? Why are looking at me? You know, just because I like to wear beige eyeshadow and feel pretty in this dump of a ship doesn't mean I always have to be your romantic bitch, Trin," Tank pouted, putting his proud hands on his hips and turning away, "I don't know why I always bail you out like this, like the great Switch Switch-Up of '93 or when you guys were filming the pilot for _Punk'd _and I pretended to be Mouse's Lady in Red that time he fell asleep at the controls in '96 or when I dressed up as Natalie Portman and married Cypher in '98–OOOOO, YOU HAVE MONEY? HOW MUCH?" he giggled, putting on his pink lip gloss.

**...**

Gasping for air, Thomas rose and rubbed at his mouth wildly.

"Bluchhh! Why does Trinity's breath smell like old engine grease?" Thomas asked. "Damn, I ain't having Happy-Happy Trinity Time ever AGAIN!"

Looking in on from the Nebuchadnezzar, Trinity did a victory dance. Tank huffed into his palm, then picked up a piece of floss and found a live skunk stuck in his gums.

Smith turned around as Thomas rose. The three Agents raised their Nerf Water guns and blasted three streams of water at him.

"No," Thomas said. He lifted his palm and the water stopped in midair, falling to puddles around him. He looked up, witnessing with eyes anew the truth of the Matrix...

"Holy shit," he said, copying an earlier line, "the Matrix is peeing on itself."

Watching this with incredulous eyes, Smith snarled and ran up to him.

"You have ordered a large Whoop-Ass with a side of fries," Thomas said. "That'll be $9.39. Please pull up to the second window."

"Aw, damn," said Brown, fumbling around in his back pocket. "I don't have the correct change. Do you guys accept Visa?"

Thomas roundhouse kicked him in the face.

"Guess not, you MasterCard bastards," said Brown, collapsing.

Then Thomas broke Smith's arm, and that wasn't very nice of him, because that hurts, I know, I fell outta the tree last month and you have to get a cast and all that and the doctors have to sow you up so you don't bleed all your guts out of your arm. Thomas jumped into Smith's body, and then Smith, he a'sploded into a million lil' Smithy clones, and all tha' Smithy clones were supa' pissed a' Thomas cus' he a'sploded the first one, and then they got supa' annoying and all deathy after that, an' not to mention the fact dat Brown and Jones could'nat find work after all dat, I mean, after one movie an' they all jus' outta work! Dat is so sad it makes me cry!

"Four-year old little cousin," I said.

"Yes?"

"GET OUTTA HERE!"

"A'kay," she giggled, running off.

"_O.o_," I said, staring at this absolute mess of an insane story. "Kids, this is my advice to you: don't ever do drugs...or sugar."

**Tha End...for now. XD**

_A/N: COPYRIGHTS, since this chappie has more than usual..._

_The Matrix__ and all of its characters __© the Wachowski Brothers, WB and Silver Productions_

"_The Real Slim Shady" © Eminem_

"_Sunglasses at Night" © Corey Hart_

"_Bombs Over Baghdad" © Outkast f/ Rage Against the Machine_

"_Secret Agent Man" © Johnny Rivers_

"_I Am...All Of Me" © Crush 40_

"_F.U.N. Song" © Stephen Hillenburg and __SpongeBob SquarePants_

_the term "randomocity" © Genius-626 (Yeshhhh, you know it ish now ;D)_

_cookies of any kind © TO ALL REVIWERS_


	13. Yon Most Holy Boredom

_A/N #1.) All right, folks, it's mini story time...of course you can choose to ignore this (you always do, it doesn't matter to me) or you can read it. Out of all the A/N dramas I've posted, this one is by far the most important. So all I simply would like, as always, is your attention._

_I am going to be a senior this year, so it's just going to be a given that I won't update as often. (Or, dare I say it?...No, I dare not say it. Not yet.) In this chapter I want to get back to those good old roots. Well, as good as they're gonna get: Smith, Jones, and Brown, being bored, on a bizarre adventure! It's a peculiar kind of nostalgia...it hasn't even been a year yet and already I'm feeling ages away...I've gone from funny to weird to darkly insane and...frankly, I'm not sure how it's fitting now. Well, anyways, it doesn't matter, since we're going to be kicking it old school, y'all. _

_I really want to deliver a heartfelt thanks to all who have read, will read, and do read this story. In real life, I am a deadly serious, easily irritable person. This is my livelihood. Without it I'd probably explode. The greatest gift, though, is making, sharing, and transmitting laughter, inspiration, and, if you're lucky enough, perhaps insanity. ;D Thank you, thank you, thank you! It's funny; my stories don't make me smile and laugh, but your reviews do! I love that you're loving it, but what's most important is that we all love lovable Agents._

_Did you know that the first and second chapter of this story were written a year and a half before I even got the Internet? My then-fifteen-year-old self was bored and decided to write the story, but it was stuck inside my computer for nearly two years. I never thought it would reach anyone, ever. But, because I edited, plotted, planned, and perfected them all that time, they became my two best chapters, I think._

_I am also incredibly glad to see that the Matrix is not a dead horse. It still has meaning to people and serves as a wellspring of creative imagination. I can't really express the gratitude for all of the reviewers I meet. All of you have so much patience, kindness, humor, creativity, insight, and compassion. And LOVE for the movie, holy cow! _

_Lastly, if you really want to know the secret...I got inspiration from some truly genius Smith and the Agents stories written long before this one, most notably the one called "Agent Smith Studies" by Troll (a brilliant spin-off is also from Geriatric Yoda) and also the genius Trinity/Smith series written by 5M1TH. Hopefully, they all won't mind a bit of free advertising, wink, wink. =D I almost wet myself reading those. So when you read these chapters, don't look at me—I'm just the messenger—credit those guys before, now, and after for their inspiring genius._

_A/N #2.) I've been reading too much of The Once and Future King. You've been warned! XD_

_A/N#3.) This could be of use to you:_

_bard=poet  
__chain-mail= a thin armor of interconnecting metal rings knights wore underneath their regular armor  
__doth= does  
__durst= dare to  
__ere= before  
__fere= friend, companion  
__hath=has  
__hast= you have  
__hence= thus  
__henceforth=from this point on  
__hither= here  
__lore, scribe, verse= story, writing, legend  
__mayhap= perhaps  
__nigh= near, close to  
__oppunmany= a lot, many, too many  
__quaff=drink  
__shan't= shall not  
__spake= spoke (did speak)  
__thence=therefore  
__thither= there  
__thou= you (informal)  
__wreathed= covered  
__ye= you, your (polite)  
__yon= your, their  
__yore= years ago_

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!  
****Part XI: Yon Most Holy Boredom"**

_Ahem...  
__since the times of now passed many yore,  
__hither shall I recount my lore:_

_In ye good Matrix of olde, upon the highest tower of Sydney of Australia,  
__those phantoms of three, Smythe, Browne, and Joneseth, in yon attire dark  
__and eyes glassed in cold ebony did sit,  
__mayhap for love o' th' art of th' idle sit, as did claimeth some,  
__mayhap filled with th' love o' the  
__most Holy Boredom—_

"Something's different today,"_ remarketh'd Agent Smythe of Sydney._

"Quite so," _did concur Browne, while in th' most mirthéd eye declared Yahtzee, and seized the riches of the Agent Joneseth, who surrendered from his very pockets the oppunmany precious baubles of Lint._

_Thence did Smythe walketh out into the streets, and, in lieu of cars, telephones and such metal objects, he witnessed a procession of ne'er-do-wells ride along a dirt road, shackled and filthy, to a most disgraceful horse-drawn cart. _"What the hell is going on here?"

"Ooo, a cart party, those can get pretty wild," _Joneseth sayeth'd blissfully._ _Smythe smacked himself most fruitfully upside the cranium._

"I don't know how," _stateth'd Browne slowly,_ " but I think we went back to the Dark Ages."

"WHAT THE—"

_With a frightful heave o' breath the phantom breathed to the count of ten, within ye olde paper bag, as did recommendeth his revered psychotherapist. _

_Finally, spake a most hyperventilating Smythe:_ "You have got to be kidding me."

**…**

_There once was a fellow named Smythe  
__who with his feres, Browne and Joneseth,  
__Did quest to save a kingdom most perilously  
__in Perilous Peril  
__(For it is in most loathéd sloth I shan't scribe hence more verse, nor the curses of spell-check!),  
__for there lurked in shadows  
__most Perilous Times ere they!_

"Shut up!"_ thence shrilleth'd the high spirits of the Agents three._

_Alas, very appropriately did I clear my throat, and did hence proceed to announce loudly: _

_There once was a man named Dave  
__who kept a dead whore in a cave.  
__He said, "Though I admit  
__I am a bit of a shit,  
__Think of the money I save!"_

"What the bloody HELL?" _shrieketh'd Smythe, waving his hands in most admirable defeat._

"Oh, but the bard is bored,"_ said I, sitting nigh ere this magical box contraption christened 'the Internet'. _"I am simply having some merry mirth, my good sir."

_Sighing, Smythe, Browne and Joneseth thus traveled to the Network Perilous, embarking upon the Most Perilously Perilous Quest of Peril where they—_

"Will you cut that out! Your narrator voice is starting to give me a headache,"_ sayeth'd Joneseth, swallowing a mighty Tylenol herb._

_I gonna talk tha' way I want, mothafucka! _I declared, drawing on my almighty powers of blank verse,  
_If you wanted real Shakespeare shit then FUCK YOU, 'cause he dead, he tied up in my basement like Roman Polanski!  
__It's 2011, baby, you be my slave now!  
__so you don' give me nunna dat lip-slip,  
__'cause I da real shit!_

"Yes, ma'am,"_ did replieth Joneseth meekly, verily freakethed out by my superior literary prowess. Merrily and hardly soberly did smileth I, for I, drunk with power and madness, smiled like a fool, and have had one too many quaffs o' bubbly soda-pop today. Hence, I apologize most humbly...hic._

_..._

_For our Agents three,  
__a bridge fell onto the banks of the rivers  
__where twin worlds cross'd;  
__the real, and the path that reach'd their distant homeland o' the Matrix.  
__They approached the bridge with caution,  
__for, thither in the light, atop a monstrous steed, sat a  
__Black Knight,  
__solid as statue, terrible, stone,  
__brewing silently in that summer haze._

"Hark! Toll," _declared the stolid Knight, wreathed of layers of black steel on that most humid of days._

"But I forgot my rolls of quarters at home," _Browne sayeth'd most ruefully, ere he was dealt a fatal tickling blow with the Knight's feathery jousting lance. _"Shit! I'm ticklishahahahahahahahaDAMN IT ALL!"

"Fool, not that kind of toll!" _shrieketh'd the Knight, drawing back his lance to point it at the others. _"Shall ye be next to meet your feathery doom?" _he rumbled, his voice dark and booming. And Joneseth did tremble, wondering why he was standing in the middle of a puddle formed only at his feet._

"Who are you?" _asketh'd Smythe._

_The Black Knight, most uncomfortable in the summer mist, removed his helmet;  
__Hence the booming voice-changer box fell out.  
__Smythe did hath a most furious aneurysm upon witnessing th' face of't._

"I am Sir Thomas of Zion, yon blackest knight from o'er the longest lake and the tallest mountain,"_ spake the Black Knight proudly. "_Are ye worthy, humble travelers? If th' toll shan't be paid, ye shan't pass hither ere ye first succeed my test."

_Smythe looked once unto his two feres, then turned to address direct the Knight_: "Fine. We have no money anyway. What's the test?"

"Ye must drink from this most Holy Grail, insolent man, and live,"_ declared Sir Thomas. Within that digital sun he held nigh in one wonderfully gauntleted hand a grail gleaming of ruby and silver._

"That's a Coca-Cola can,"_ Smythe commented._

"Fool! Thou durst blaspheme th' Holiest cup—and lo, thence, heavens be!—the glory o' God?"_ bellowed the terrible Sir Thomas, his voice rolling upon the earth as thunder, thence swilling the magical quaff which doth rendered him most 'sugar high'._ "Now we must battle! For honor!"

_Drawing upon his sword, the Black Knight of Zion prepared for battle. Smythe unsheathed as well, and drew upon his quaint blade, called the Desert Eagle._

"I durst bring a gun to a sword-fight; alas, judge me not, good people, but tell me thus: doth that make me a coward, or alive?_" Smythe grinned, for the Carl Sagan-ness of his speech induc'd in my poor audience much groaning._

"God don't drink Coca-Cola, that's for sure,"_ with great wisdom did chimeth Joneseth, much to th' resulting peril o' his belov__é__d __fere Smythe, who henceforth was most whooped in the buttocks region by the noble and righteous Sir Thomas of Zion._

_Browne and Joneseth, in concern and love for their companion, did sit upon the summer grass and watched, filled with evil mirth, Smythe's cruel medieval punishment._

"For the love of God, I just want to go home!"_ did weep Smythe in a manner akin to a small girl-child,_ "GET ME OFF THIS FREAKING RIDE!"

**…**

_Ever-courtly, Sir Thomas spared that wretchéd life of Agent Smythe of Sydney  
__but not ere coercing the poor man to watch  
__oppunmany episodes of Lost, and henceforth asking him  
__to reconstruct a coherent sequence of events  
__from it. _

_The punishment, though cruel and unusual, was most merciful,  
__for it best served Smythe's transgression  
__and was also not the movie  
__eXistenZ..._

"You're white," _remarketh'd Smythe quite randomly to Sir Thomas on their journey back. They had since then become feres...if feres signified blood enemies._

"So?"

"So...aren't you supposed to be a white Knight instead of black?"

_Sir Thomas' eyes narrowed into twin slits aflame beneath his chain-mail. _"Are you being RACIST, good sir?"

"I ain't if you ain't, sucker," _sayeth'd Smythe most wisely._

"I am colorblind," _interjecteth'd Browne, his breast swelling with much honour,_ "that is why they named me after the color of poo."

"Eww," _gallantly replied Sir Thomas, who gallantly galloped to th' meadow in th' West to hock his most gallant noogey thither in the clear blue streams._

_Thus, together with the three phantoms, did Sir Thomas of Zion, Sir Thomas the Brave,  
__Sir Thomas the Gallant, Sir Thomas the Courtly,  
__Sir Thomas, the Guardian of the Idiots, Sir Thomas, the Protector of the Dimwits, _

_Sir Thomas, the Knight whom Cannot Open his Own Peanut Butter Jar Lid without Running the Lid Under a Faucet of Hot Water and Accidentally Dropping Said Lid, When Finally Opened, Down the Garbage Disposal, Where It Clogs the Blades and Backs up the Entire Contents of the Disposal into the Sink, Thus Stinking the Entire Kitchen with the Acrid Smell of Saturday Night's Pizza Crust mixed with that Vague Scent of Last Month's Thai Noodles which Reminds Him Slightly of his Dirty Socks, Upon which He Calls the Landlady Over to Help, Only to Realize He Did not Pay the Rent Since January and Must Hence Get a Job working as a Hot Dog Mascot in a Strip Mall, _

—_I must pauseth now to taketh a brief breatheth, for Sir Thomas was much belov__é__d in the Court of Zion,  
__and the list of his titles is  
__Indeed most admirable—_

_they traveled far to reach the Court of Zion,  
__where King Morpheus and his noble Knights and Dames  
__awaited their fere's triumphant return._

"My lord," _sayeth'd Sir Thomas, low'ring his head._

"Ah, Sir Thomas, rise!" _King Morpheus cried joyously, clapping his happy palms together like a madman._ "And thou hast brought friends to bear witness now! Come, all! Come, Queen Niobe! Friends, ho, heed me this day henceforth, and rejoice! For I have discovered th' most holy relic!"

"Ay?"_ replied his court. _"What is it, my lord? A sword? A scroll? A grail? A cross?"

_He held the most Holy Taco for all of the Kingdom of Zion to bear witness, upon which Queen Niobe did rolleth her eyes, reminded also o' his 'most holy' discovery of socialism three nights ago (most practised was the Queen in th' art o' sarcasm concerning matters o' her idiot husband). Sir Thomas the Brave grinneth stupidly beneath his armour, while Sir Apoc of the Moussed Haircut, Sir Mouse the Meek, Sir Cypher the Creepy, Sir Tank the Loyal, Sir Dozer of the Greased Cap, and Dames Trinity and Switch of the Kingdom of Kick-Ass-Dames slappeth'd themselves forcefully in their countenances. Th' three phantoms of Sydney stareth'd most appropriately for the passing of ten straight suns._

**…**

Smith awoke with a start. "WTF?"

He looked about him, patting the bed, doors, and windows suspiciously. No kings. No courts. No tacos, Coca-Cola grails, no Shakespearean narrators...he sighed, shaking his head.

All was strangely _normal._

"DAMN YOU, JONES!" Brown shrieked from the kitchen, running about the table like a deranged chicken, accidentally spraying his ice cream sundae with the fire extinguisher Jones had replaced the whipped cream with. "I'M FLAME RETARDANT NOW!"

"No you're not, Brown, you're just flame _special_," Jones snickered, scooping out some more peanut butter to slather all over the toilet seat.

Agent Smith vowed never to get drunk at Medieval Times ever again.

**…**

THA END

**…**

"_Lying in the dark,  
__the Queen asked the King,  
__'Why, darling husband,  
__do you have such a tiny  
__little thing?'"_

_IT'S FROM ROBIN HOOD! I COULD NOT RESIST! XD_

_Also, I wished that that dirty "Dave" limerick were mine, but it's not. I saw it in a video called "The Matrix Hotboxed"._

_COOKIES TO BE BROUGHT TO THE COURT OF REVIEWERS!_


	14. The World's Shortest Chappie Award

_A/N: Nope. Couldn't have thought of anything else. Nope-nee-nope-nope. And Cerulean and Genius-626, my faithful reviewers! AN INFINITY OF COOKIES FOR YOU BOTH!_

* * *

**"Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XII:**

**And the Award for the World's Shortest Chappie Goes To...**

**The Guy who makes up the Ridiculously Long Titles for these Chappies, but  
****He's at Work Right Now, so I Gotta Think of Something Myself, which is Cool, but I Mean, my Brain is Fucking Fried Today, and I Don't Mean Fried like that Kentucky Fried Chicken you had Yesterday and got Food Poisoning from 'Cause it Wasn't Fried all the Way, 'Cause  
****That's just Weak, I Mean Fuckin' Fried Like French Fries Fried, Mothafuckas!"**

* * *

Their faces were worn with the salt and grit of the Wild, Wild West. The sun-filled sky burned orange over their heads. From the desert fire burning in their eyes, it was clear some great red river had to be shed to lift the drought of the enemy.

Agents Brown and Jones approached one another, the spurs in their heels clicking heavily in the sunlit dust.

A tumbleweed passed between their silence. Their eyes narrowed in the shadows of their weary, snarling faces; their hands tightened over their revolvers.

"This town ain't big enough for the two of us," said Brown.

They squatted in a Lego town the size of a shoebox.

Jones slapped Brown with a plastic toy pistol he had retrieved from a dying G.I. Joe comrade. Brown, in retaliation, threw a Lincoln Log at Jones.

"Ow," stated Jones.

"Ow," replied Brown.

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

"Ow."

Suffice to say, it was a horrific tragedy and many Lego civilians were killed.

Meanwhile, Smith sniffed from the downstairs living room couch watching his favorite daytime soap opera, _General Animal Hospital_.

Mr. Booger-Mooger the stuffed animal kitten was in the ICU, apparently shot in the head by Miss Sparkly Unicorn for the millions he had earned investing stock in the ball-of-string industry; she had seduced him he was in the throes of her trap when—

"Where is the money?" Miss Sparkly Unicorn asked, batting her eyelashes seductively.

"_Don't do it!_" Smith screamed, biting his nails. Then, realizing he had already bit his nails during his comrades' _let's go 100-foot bungee cord jumping off a 50-foot cliff_ experience last Tuesday, he seized his sleeping landlord's nails and began biting them instead. "_Don't tell her you—_"

"Why, I spent it all on Fancy Feast, my dear," said the kitten.

Thus, a smoldering Miss Sparkly Unicorn whipped out a spray-bottle filled with water and shot Mr. Booger-Mooger in the head: "No dough? Bad kitty! Bad KITTY!"

So now he was in the hospital.

A horde of stuffed animal friends surrounded the wounded kitten to offer their griefs and consolations, filling the quiet, white hospital room with sniffles and sobs; but somewhere in the distance sat an orchestra, ready and ever-waiting...therefore, every time one of them tried to speak, it was drowned out by a dramatic musical score—namely, the sad, slow Italian opera version of the Super Mario Bros. theme song.

The teddy bear left the room for a drink of water.

"I'm—" said the giraffe.

The blaring dramatic music played again, to which the teddy bear ran back into the room, took out a double barrel shotgun and blew the orchestra composer away.

The heart monitor flatlined; Mr. Booger-Mooger died from an acute onset of overblinking. The credits rolled and Smith cried, stuffing his sleeping landlord's chewed-up hand in the wastebasket along with the dirty Cleenexes.

Two minutes later a Coca-Cola commercial came on, lasting the span of a hummingbird's heartbeat—_Hey, kids! Check this out! Wanna grow up to be an important and influential person in the world? Drink this can of magic that comes out of a chemical vat and will someday kill you! YAY CAPITALISM!_—and Smith realized that he had, in actuality, been watching the Super Bowl all this time.

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR VERY NEXT ISSUE...HEHEHE, JUST LIKE SUPERMAN!**

_A/N: We actually have a cat named Booger-Mooger. My cousin named it that...*facepalm*_


	15. Sheems I've Loscht My Quiche

"**Pointless Agent Insanity!  
****Part XIII: Sheems I've Loscht My Quiche, Part I"**

* * *

The doorbell kept ringing despite the fact that it was four in the morning. What was almost as strange as this was the fact that Agents Johnson and Jackson lay on the floor, their eyes glued to a documentary special on Dell Computers.

_The Dell Computer will stalk its prey long into the night. It is an emailovore and will consume as many as 6,000 Facebook posts per day. Watch how this female Dell retracts into herself as she approaches her suitors—Microsoft and Office Word, who will now compete for the right to mate._

_They begin by circling each other. Microsoft lashes out first with an incompatibility message. Office Word recovers the document quickly. Yet Microsoft brings the fatal blow: the twenty-five character key, a code so venomous it will crash any system within a closed network. _

_Office Word falls without a sound. The victorious Microsoft and the female Dell will mate in an intricate downloading dance—_

"Answer the door for me, willya," said Johnson tiredly.

Jackson opened the door and stood as still as stone. The sight of Agent Grey dressed in a Girl Scout uniform burned with the gold dawn rising in the doorway. He wore a green beret that kept slipping into his eyes, as well as his suit underneath, but had a skin-tight plaid skirt stretched over it.

Jackson died twice from the very sight of it.

"Good morning," said Grey, studying an index card glued to his left palm,"sir slash ma'am. How are you today? I am selling cookies to benefit my Brownie Troops."

"What the hell are you doing?" Jackson said.

Grey sniffed, his eyes growing wide beneath his sunglasses. "Don't...don't you want a cookie?" he asked, his jutting bottom lip trembling slightly.

"Grey," Jackson said. "How many other houses have you visited so far?"

"Just my own," said Grey.

"Grey," stated Jackson, a sober look cut across the lines on his bored, blank face. "Tell me you did not buy all the cookies for yourself."

"N—no," Grey said, looking down at his shiny black Mary Janes.

Jackson tapped his foot. _"Grey."_

Grey sprung atop his wagon of cookies, tearing the boxes open. "_No one shall have the cookies but_ _me!_" he shrilled. "_Me! Mine! Alone—I—I'm so_ _**alone!**_"

He wailed from atop the mountain of empty cookie boxes, using the last cookie left as a Kleenex. Then, seeing a delicious cookie before him, he wolfed it down. Then, seeing that he now longer had a cookie, he wailed some more.

Jackson closed the door. A crash sounded, along with a series of unbroken screams as a dog sniffed the empty contents of the cookie boxes and was now holding Grey at gunpoint, demanding to know where the peanut butter swirl was.

"I heard incoherent screaming. Who was at the door?" Johnson said.

"Telemarketer," said Jackson.

* * *

Smith sat in a large black leather chair from behind the desk. His heavily-ringed hands were clasped together, and from the shadows of the black window-blinds he appeared prominent and deep in thought.

"What do you wish of the Don Smith," he said, squinting, "on this, the day of his daughter's wedding?"

The chair spun around. A drunken Jones kept turning the chair while another drunken Brown kept playing the dramatic trumpet music. Smith might also have been drunk, but, it seemed to Johnson that Smith's abnormalities only showed through when he was sober. Thus, when he went to the doctor's office, his blood results came back as: "So smashed David Hasselhoff took one look and said, _Daaaaaaaamn._"

"Uhm...Thompson didn't come back," said Johnson. "And Grey got mugged by a poodle this morning."

"Let me get this straight. You need a new, competent Agent on your—" said Smith, craning his neck as far as it would go as he spun. "—team, since Thompson married Pace and now they're spending their honeymoon at—speech therapy, where they'll be alone, 'cause no one knows what the hell they're saying anyway—well, well, Johnson, if the Don Smith might say so, this is quite an interesting—" He folded his arms and glared at the air as Jones spun him around again. "—this is quite an interesting ordeal you have here. But what's in it for the Don Smith? Should the Don Smith grant you your favor on this—the day of his daughter's wedding?"

"You have a daughter?" said Johnson.

"No," said Smith. "My sister does."

"You have a sister?"

"No. I meant my sister," said Smith, "who is also my wife."

Jones stopped turning the chair for a minute to register this. Then, shrugging just as the grinning Agent began to get up, he pushed Smith back in the chair and spun it once again.

Glowering, Smith flipped him off.

"In any case, I say don't worry about it. I'll make your new team member an offer he can't refuse," said Smith, turning around again. "For the love of God, Jones, you can stop whirling me around in the chair now! I'm getting d—"

He stumbled, bent down, threw up beneath the desk, got up, sat back in the chair, folded his arms and whirled some more.

* * *

Suffice to say, the search for any new potential Agent was bound to be a difficult one.

"CURVE THE BULLET, DAMMIT!" Angelina Jolie screeched before jumping out of the seven-story window while making ten movies out of the motion.

Horrendously difficult.

Johnson and Jackson glanced at each other, about to leave to catch their daily documentary special on the commercial-mallward migration patterns of Wi-Fi, when all of a sudden a somber-looking man in a black suit sauntered in. Johnson looked at Jackson, who shrugged. He looked the part—did he play the part?

"And you are?" Jackson said.

"I'm Bond," said the Agent. "Jamesh Bond."

Jackson proceeded to bang his head directly against the hardest wall that would stand up to the force of his volatile head-banging—namely, the Great Wall of China.

Johnson blinked.

"Oh, shit," said Jamesh Bond, suddenly remembering something. "I'll be right back. It sheems I've loscht my quiche."

"Your what?"

"My quiche," said Bond.

Johnson squinted. "You lost your...quiche?"

"No, no, no, you're shaying it all wrong! Why are you talking like that?" Bond shrilled, patting his pockets. "My KEYSH! I loscht the KEYSH to my SHUBARU! Man, M ish gonna be sho PISHED OFF when I get home!"

And Agent Johnson threw Agent 007 out the window.

* * *

Two hours later, Johnson cupped the ruddy skin of his forehead throbbing in his palm.

"But I am," Thomas affirmed. "I'm an Agent. I got a license to kill. See?"

He pulled out a small plastic card and held it out in front of him expectantly. Johnson looked once at it. "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD," he shrieked, pulling out his hair by the roots, "THIS IS A FUCKING FISHING LICENSE!"

"MURDER!" Thomas shrieked, now finding it very professional to do so, per Johnson's example. "THINK OF ALL THE POOR FISHIES WHO GO MISSING EVERY DAY! WHERE'S THE CPS FOR THEM, HUH? THINK OF THE FISHIES, MAN, THINK OF THE FISHIES! WE FISH AND WE FISH AND WE TELL FISH STORIES THAT AREN'T EVEN TRUE, 'CAUSE IT WAS REALLY _THIS_ BIG, I DUNNO WHAT'CHU TALKIN' 'BOUT, WILLIS—OH, THE FISHY _INHUMANITY_!"

"NEO!" Morpheus screamed, spotting him.

"WHAT?"

"DID YOU TAPE CSI FOR ME?" he shouted, despite the fact that they were sitting side-by-side in the audition waiting room.

"NO!"

"DAMN IT!"

"WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?" Thomas shrilled. "BONES IS FAR COOLER THAN CSI ANYWAY!"

"YOU TAKE THAT BACK OR I'M OPENING A CAN OF WHOOP-ASS!"

"Uh-oh," said Trinity, remembering the Chuck Norris horror and subsequently diving behind the nearest bush.

"OOOOOO, BIG THREAT, BIG MAN, I'M WETTING MY PANTS RIGHT NOW!" Thomas taunted...then, looking down, concluded: "'Kay, I'll give you that one."

And Johnson shot himself in the head to escape the sheer insanity.

* * *

_To be continued...dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnn!_


	16. You Fothermuckers!

_A/N: I have been on hiatus because I've been brain-trippin', yo. No drugs or anything like that. Just movies and books. Movies and books. Like Ponyboy Curtis! I am sorry. I love me some good cheap Agent laughs. Don't you?_

* * *

**"Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XIV:**

**You Fothermuckers!"**

* * *

Smith bust the door open. Jones and Brown sat on the couch watching TV.

"What's head-banging?" he said.

The two Agents, wide-eyed and pale, turned their heads around like the Exorcist...nah, I'm just kidding with ya. They really just sat there as they spun the world around them. So there. Take that, Linda Blair!

Jones gasped. "You don't know what head-banging is?"

Smith shook his head.

"Why, it's the most important thing in the world!"

"It is?" he said, alarmed. Apparently no one at the meeting had sent him a memo to that C-14 bomb pack he called a beeper that was strapped to his chest. "What is it, then?"

"I don't know," Jones shrugged, turning the world back on its regular axis of rotation. "I just like brain-trippin' with ya. Go ask Brown."

Smith killed Jones with a pillow and took his spot on the couch.

"For the last time, what's head-banging?" he demanded. "Is it when you bang somebody's head with a spoon?"

"I thought that was when you took somebody's head and played the drums with it," said Jones, puzzled as he reentered the body of a Cheeto lying on the floor. He began licking himself. Strangely enough, he tasted like chocolate.

"No, and no. It's when you bang your head against objects to achieve specific ends," Brown said.

Smith crushed the Jones-Chocolate-Cheeto into the carpet with his heel. Because of this, the real Agent Jones sprang up in full form straight from the floorboards. He licked himself. He thought he tasted awfully bland without a pinch of oregano. Reloading his Desert Eagle, he shot himself in the head in order to wind up in the place of Hansel and Gretel. He ate the entire gingerbread house in one bite. But don't call him fat when he walks by us, okay?—he's not fat. He's not fat. Don't call him fat. Got it? Okay. Good. Now shush. Shush. I said _shush_, Agent McBlimp is walking by us right now. "Doesn't that hurt?"

"No—I use my head to bang things in very practical and efficient ways, Agent Smith," Brown explained. He motioned toward the door. "For example."

He charged into the door, which crumbled under the sheer hardness of his skull. Then he ran over to the mailbox outside to check the mail. When he saw his subscription to Country Living had run out, he cursed Paula Dean, and thence used his head in the manner of a baseball bat to swing the box clean off.

"Sucker," he said, despite the fact that it had been his own mailbox.

Smith slumped on the couch.

"What's wrong?"

"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "we must take action." 

* * *

Ten minutes later, they stood in the middle of FF dot net, removing via black spraypaint the word "less" in Pointless Agent Insanity!

"Hey!" I said, running out to the front porch wearing nothing but a sawed-off shotgun and red polka-dotted patched-up hillbilly overalls. See, what I tell you? What I tell you? I tell you and I tell you, and you still dun believe me. I brain trip, yo. Why you no believe me? Now look at what you did. U made meh verah sadd. Tanks a lot, u modderfocker. "What the HELL are you kids doing?"

"We are not required to acknowledge your presence, O young one," Smith said, cleverly sidestepping a new fanfiction chapter, "for I believe we are much older than you."

"Indeed," Brown concurred. "By the standard of human years, we're stuck in perpetual menstruation—" Jones hit him in the arm to get him to try again. "Ahem, I meant—multiplication—melioration— masturbation—MIDLIFE CRISIS! MIDLIFE CRISIS. YES, THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED," he announced too loudly, smiling.

Smith walked away, unable to form any kind of coherent response. Except for maybe running up to the camera and head-banging it a little. 

* * *

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...ER, NEBUCHADNEZZAR 

* * *

Link, Morpheus, and Trinity sat in the mess hall.

"So...why isn't Neo coming to breakfast again?" Link asked.

"You don't want to know," a bleary-eyed Trinity said.

"Why?"

"Yesterday he went to the ghetto to rescue a redpill," she said, rubbing her forehead. "Let's just say he learned some new swear words along the way."

"Good morning, you fothermuckers!" Thomas sang, beaming a brilliantly stupid smile as he took his seat—reserved only for the One: the honorary adult-sized high chair, constructed 72 feet in the air—at the table. "How about some of that fothermucking good breakfast, huh?"

"We do not condone swearing at this table, Neo," Morpheus said.

"What'chu talkin' bout, Willis?"

Willis slapped himself in the head, for this was the fourth time this gag had been mentioned thus far in the story.

"I mean, clean your dirty mouth up!"

"What?" Thomas said, looking down at his adult-sized bib labeled: DEAR NEO: FOOD NO GO HERE. He banged his fork indignantly against the table. "Okay, I _admit _it. I eat fast. Is that a freaking crime, Morpheus? Last time I knew, the Soviet Union was a free country!"

Trinity popped a truckload of aspirin and was carried off the set. Link babbled. Morpheus' voice grew dark as he stood up and pointed a quavering finger of rage at Thomas.

"You shall never speak of that...that...that...political _farce_ ever again," he said.

"Tzar Nicholas II! Alexander Kerensky! Vladimir Lenin! Joseph Stalin! Nikita Khrushchev! Leonid Brezhnev! Yuri Andropov! Konstantin Chernenko! Mikhail Gorbachev!" Thomas sang in a taunting schoolboy voice. He stuck his tongue out at his glaring captain. "Admit it—socialism is the socio-philopsophical EPIC FAIL of the political and economic world!"

"Perhaps in the secular district," Morpheus remarked, "but it does promote some of the higher nuances of man's natural tendency towards egalitarianism."

"Fallacy! Fallacy! Oh, the horror!" Thomas shrieked, rolling his eyes to the back of his head and clutching his ears. "Oh, the utter lack of objective evidence!"

"But, but, but," Morpheus stammered, his eyes growing wide and glistening as his jutting bottom lip trembled, "that's just theory—"

"Admit it—you EPIC FAIL AT EMPIRICAL RHETORIC!"

"STFU!" Morpheus screamed, and with that most sorrowful utterance ran out of the room crying.

Link shot himself in the head with an ice pick that melted before he pulled the trigger.

"Hehehe, don't you know? I'm the One. I win at everything," Thomas said, "you fothermuckers." 

* * *

_End of brain-trip. Class dismissed! ;D_


	17. The Pimp Finger of Doom

_A/N: Hello, fellow fanfic people, I just wanted to say two things: one, I'm sorry for the huge gap in updates. This fic is still kicking, in one form or another! And two, there is reason to celebrate today... This fic, this horribly random, sociopathically pointless fic, has made the Matrix fanfics recommendation page on TV Tropes! TV frickin' Tropes! This calls for a round of digital cookies on me. _

_Genius-626—Yeah, Socialists are fun. So are cookies! Take one._

_ 7—Jones is always bland without a pinch of oregano, doncha know, doncha know. =p Cookies for you!_

_Chaos Gamer—Thanks! Have a cookie._

_Jasper Blood—Jeez, I'm so sorry your summer had been boring and monotonous! I hope you're not dead! I had NO inspiration whatsoever, and it was a really sucky summer on this end... I hope these few following chapters can make up for it. Cookies for you!_

_PAI fan—You know what? It took me three months to realize that PAI stood for Pointless Agent Insanity. That's how monumentally stupid I am. Cookies for you!_

_Cookies to all reviewers._

_Now let's get going.  
_

* * *

**Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XV: The Pimp Finger of Doom**

* * *

_Once upon a time, between the merry old lands of Oz and Narnia, there was a war. This war was waged by fictional iconoclasts, who both kidnapped child soldiers to constitute their armies, and used brainwashing to convert them to their cause, feeding those young impressionable minds the illusion that they were superhumanly important. None knew how it had started, only that it had no end, that their respective writers had created this terrible blight on the human race—and that as long as little kids played Candy Crush Saga and never cracked open a book this atrocity would not continue._

Jones blinked as the credits to the documentary rolled and the narrator on the History Channel hung himself before the aliens could detain him for reciting some real human facts.

"ALIENS!" screeched the wild-haired aliens guy beside him, thrashing his arms joyously as he was ransacked by a headhumper crab. "WE SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!"

The station blacked out. Jones sighed, flipping the channel to Rachel Ray, who was busy showing America how best to spice a headhumper before putting it in the oven. He then flipped the channel to a religious show, which featured a headhumper pastor clad in white and gold robes as it recited the Ten Headhumping Virtues: Headhump, Headhump, Headhump, Scare the Shit Out of Some Weak-Ass Hyoomans, Headhump, Headhump, Headhump, Bleed Some Acid Shit, Headhump, and Headhump.

Jones flipped the channel again to ESPN, where the Interplanetary Headhumper Championship was well underway. Sports commentator Headhump McHumperhead predicted that this was the best year for the prestigious sport of Headhumping. His colleagues argued over which MPV had the best stats. Jones flipped the channel once more to MTV, where an interviewer held up a microphone to the beautiful and famous actress Humpahead O' Head-a-Hump. Her next movie would be a summer romantic comedy, examining the social stigma between zombies and headhumpers—

A crowbar smashed its way through the television, cutting out the program mid-sentence.

"_Hey_!" Jones cried, as he jumped behind the couch for cover. "_I don't like MTV either, but you don't see me destroying your crappy cable!_"

The figure clutching the crowbar raised an eyebrow, then smashed the window and leapt out of it into the street below.

Jones stood in the middle of the drafty room, silent.

"Goddamn Jehovah's Witnesses," he said.

Moments later the two other Agents came running in.

"Jones!" Smith called.

"What?"

"Who was that?"

"Dunno."

"Was that a famous video game character who smashed through our television screen just now?"

"No," said Jones.

"Did he carry a crowbar?"

"No."

"Did he say nothing to you?"

"No."

"Did he wear an orange Mark IV HEV Suit?"

"No."

"Did he have a goatee?"

"No."

"Did he have unearthly green eyes?"

"No."

"Did he wear Buddy Holly glasses?"

"No."

"We can rule out Demi Levato then," Brown said, "but Miley Cyrus might still fit the bill."

Smith threw Brown through the wall into another continent.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—" and the Agent landed head-first in a cabbage patch in Moscow, was harvested and enjoyed in a delicious Russian soup.

"Dipshit, that was GORDON FREEMAN!" Smith screeched, blowing off a chunk of the roof with the sheer loudness of his voice. "From HALF-LIFE! The ONE PROGRAM I'VE BEEN CHASING FOR MONTHS! AND YOU JUST LET HIM GO!"

"A simple 'Thank You' would suffice every now and then," Jones said, placing his hands on his hips. "Gawd, I just hate how you take me for granted sometimes!"

"Why have you been chasing him?" Brown asked, now floating in the tub with his trusty noodle. I am not going to begin to explain, since Brown's epic journey back to the apartment involved lots of time travel, unrequited love, psychological horror, genocide, spiritual growth, introspective staring into the rain, chain-smoking and like half the plot to _Back to the Future 2._

"My microwave casserole," Smith said, his voice dark with rage. "He _ruined_ it."

"Actually," said a random nerd walking by the scene, "if you play Episode 2 you'll find that that casserole really belonged to Dr. Arne MagnussUUUHHHN!" as he was shot in the chest seventeen thousand, two hundred and thirty-six point five times... The half-bullet had stopped on the way to work for a midmorning coffee at Starbucks, but the girl behind the counter was goofing off instead of actually getting his order, so Billy the Bullet got super pissed as he sat there and his Hummer spat lethal carbon emissions into the air while he waited, and not to mention the fact that when he finally did get it, as he was pulling out some prick on the road who'd never even heard the phrase "right-of-way" side-swiped him, causing Billy the Bullet to knock his arm into the holster and spill hot coffee all over his junk, so of course he got some road rage and swerved to the left and only grazed the random nerd's arm, and when his boss called him in everyone at the cubicles swiveled around in their chairs and said "Ooooooooooh" like shrieky little schoolgirls, and as he glared at them Billy the Bullet knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he got canned for poor performance, he'd been doing poorly lately due to the baby being up at all hours of the night busting caps in gangstas' bitch-asses, and he thought of begging his boss not to can him, because he had a bullet and two shells at home, but as his grandpa always told him,_ Son, _y_ou don't never beg when you can kick 'em in the nads and run the touchdown,_ but he didn't know what that had to do with anything as his boss ranted and raved at him, and then he realized he never had a grandpa in the first place as his boss kicked his groveling ass out the door. Thus recounts the tragic story of how Billy the Bullet got fired. And everyone in the universe died from that very horrible, very drawn-out pun. The End.

"You have no idea," Smith said, "of how long I've waited, and watched, and planned... I swore I would have my revenge... I could forgive him for pushing that crystal into the chamber. I could forgive him for unleashing hordes of alien predators onto the Earth and indirectly causing humanity to become enslaved. I could forgive him for the subsequent wanton bloodshed and destruction. But that casserole wasn't just any old casserole. It wasn't your mother's green bean, or the mac and cheese she pops into the oven for Christmas when it was still left over from Thanksgiving. It was... Lean and Fit. LEAN AND FIT. _LEAN. _AND. MOTHERFUCKING_. FIT_! ...and the worst part of it was..." Smith's voice hissed like pistons between his teeth. "He... he... _sprinkled Parmesan on it and added FIFTY MORE CALORIES TO MY SERVING THAN MY DIETICIAN RECOMMENDED_!"

His two cohorts screamed.

"Smith—is that _true_?"

"No," Smith said, "but it sure makes a good horror story, innit?"

Meanwhile, as Rachel Ray finished spicing the headhumper roast, she looked up, sensing a vague disturbance in the Force...

...Someone in the infinite universe just trashed the use of Parmesan cheese.

"Oh," she said, eyes narrowing, "it's _on_."

The audience gave her a standing ovation as she ripped off her costume, revealing a pterodactyl underneath, spread her scaly fifteen-foot wings and flew braying through the roof.

* * *

Smith sent Jones and Brown to investigate every arcade in the city... and no, I'm not saying "amusement hall," you pretentious SoHo bastards! Go get your championship taken away by that deaf, dumb and blind kid somewhere else!

As he sat and sipped his tea, Roger Daltrey looked up and exploded. And the entire '60s generation thus decimated me with their walkers. I died as they poisoned me with their vile untrue stories of Woodstock. I got better.

Anyhow, Smith sent the other two to scope out every game and entertainment station in the city in order to sniff out Freeman... who often cleverly stood still and disguised himself as huge ten-foot tall arcade machines.

"Oh my GOD!" Tank shrieked from the operator's chair, bouncing up and down. "It's _Mortal Komba_t! I haven't played that in _forever_!" Before Trinity could interrupt to say he'd played the Android version while on the can just five minutes earlier, Tank yelled into the headset: "Neo, quick, gimme a quarter! _Johnny Cage is kickin' asses and chewin' bubblegum, n00bz_!"

His pleas fell on deaf ears, for Thomas was already jacked into the Matrix. When Trinity handed Tank a quarter, he seized it and jammed it into the slot marked HA HA IT'S JUST MY PIGGY BANK YOU GULLIBLE BASTARDS. He then illegally downloaded a PC port of the game, drooling as he did, and nearly broke off both his thumbs button-mashing the first twelve rounds. He then died in the next round as his thumbs broke off and went flying across the room. One of them landed in Morpheus' chili cup from Wendy's, and so Morpheus tearfully sued Wendy's for a googleplex of dollars, on the grounds that his severed thumb had chili on it.

"Why do I feel like punching something out of sheer rage?" Smith asked as he walked into the arcade. He shrugged, figuring his rage quota just hadn't been met for the month. His fist automatically shot out and slammed into an ATM beside him, which released such a flood of twenty dollar bills that Wendy's was able to pay Morpheus back the googleplex-dollar lawsuit, and in retaliation made him his legal bitch—namely, standing out on the corner in the middle of July dressed as a giant bowl of chili.

Morpheus shed a single manly tear as he handed a woman a flyer for delicious pretzel burgers.

Smith walked down this aisle and that. Past Space Invaders. Past Dig-Dug. Past Donkey Kong. Past Pac Man strung out on E and eating everything in sight and the Ghosts having to stage an intervention by replacing all the food in the house with horrible-tasting pellets that were actually rat poison. Past the teenagers playing DDR and Guitar Hero, past the grandmas who were bowling on the Wii, past the time-traveling band of nerds who were strangling each other with the cords of their Segas and Nintendos, past some two-year-old as he killed his father in Halo, his baby-fat arms raising his beer in victory as his father curled up on the carpet and cried. When he had walked the entire length of the hall, seeing nothing remarkable, he walked right back out.

Gordon Freeman, who had been watching the Agent all this time from behind an obsolete machine, breathed a sigh of relief. He stepped out into the open, watching on with a measure of smug satisfaction as his mortal foe walked obliviously past the arcade and down the street. He smiled. Then, realizing something grave, he turned slowly around, eyes wide with horror.

The machine he had ducked behind was none other than... _Polybius. _

[_Warning: Joke may not apply in all fifty states. All ages are not eligible to LOL. Must be a legal citizen of Life to LOL. Employees of joke, or any of its respective affiliates, parent companies, advertising agencies and subsidiaries and their immediate family (spouses, children and half-children, siblings and half-siblings, and members of household) are not eligible to LOL. Joke starts on June 9, 1981, 6:43 EST and ends on December 30, 2007, 12:59 EST. Participation to LOL constitutes entrant's full and unconditional agreement to laugh as hard as humanly possible. Joke is subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and restrictions. Joke may not be redeemed for cash or other sources of LOL. Void in Puerto Rico, Guam, and where prohibited. Must be eighteen years or older to LOL_.]

As Gordon Freeman raised his trusty crowbar to decimate the vile thing, it tipped over from its complete standing position and crushed him.

* * *

Smith went on walking until, as if pulled along by an unseen force, he ducked left into an alley and found Thomas huddled in a corner. The program was hunched over an unplugged keyboard in his lap, giggling softly and typing away. Smith walked slowly to the program and stopped. Thomas continued to chuckle. Then, sensing something, he looked up and over his shoulder, at the Agent towering over him.

"Aw, shit," Thomas pouted, "of _course_ I get a Level 2 Mage!"

Smith blinked. His mind considered an option that popped up, then dissolved it the instant it appeared.

No. He wouldn't do it. Not with _this_ moron...

Smith looked down and saw that among the pile of games stacked beside the program was Half-Life. Bending down, he picked it up, studying the box.

"You're playing this?" he said.

"A variation," Thomas said. "Gary's Mod."

"So you know of Gordon Freeman, then?"

Thomas snorted. "I'd be a complete dweeb if I didn't," he said, as he sat with his socks pulled up to his eyeballs, his pocket protector leaking ten gallons of ink, and the blades of the propeller cap stuck on top of his head whirling like a merry-go-round.

That... actually made some sort of inane sense, Smith thought. He thought he'd killed Freeman twenty years ago, when he kicked him so hard that his heel pierced the thin membrane of the space-time continuum and sent the famous video game character to Development Hell for his sins. If Anderson had somehow re-activated the program's code, and re-inserted it into the Matrix, then his foe would have encountered no problems in continuing his criminal career. He shuddered. A rogue physicist running amok, free to cause hell, free to kill and mar and rape and plunder, free to sprinkle Parmesan cheese willy-nilly and ruin other casseroles...

_His_ casseroles.

And it also explained the reason why Freeman looked a character from The Boondocks every time he raised an eyebrow.

Smith brushed a mote diplomatically off his suit. Well, much as he was one to loath, he had to admit it—when he needed him, Thomas was always there for him. Being annoying and idiotic on supreme levels, granted, but the Agent supposed that in the Matrix even morons like Anderson had to have some sort of pur—

His own hand suddenly flew up and whacked him in the eye during his internal monologue. He glared through his glasses, only to see Thomas' finger perched dangerously near F11, which was the Architect's shortcut for "smack yo'self like you some trick at a slow-ass truckstop."

Everyone in the world, whether they knew it or not, feared utterly the Pimp Finger of Doom.

Grinning, Thomas hit the key again. Smith smacked himself again and felt a small vein twitch in his forehead; that _dope_ had that dangerously idiotic look on his face... the one where his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes were crossing.

Smith's hand smacked him again.

"_Stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself stop hitting yourself!_" Before Smith could lunge for the jugular, Thomas swiped the keyboard clean across his crotch, which was incidentally the command for "Freeze Smith in Bullet-Time."

"_What the hell are you doing?_" Smith shrieked.

Thomas lifted up his keyboard, causing an avalanche of Mountain Dew and Monster Drink cans to become sentient from the jolt of static electricity and terrorize the city. "FPS, motherfucker!"

"Isn't every day an FPS for you?"

"Nah," Thomas said, "sometimes it's an RPG, sometimes it's a Miyamoto game, and sometimes it's that one mod run on a crappy eight-bit emulator where all the glitches make the characters look like they really need to take a crap because the modder has a serious pathological crap fetish that his wife doesn't know about and acts all shocked about when he fishes hers out of the toilet and makes religious statues out of them." He paused. "And sometimes it's Candy Crush Saga."

Before Smith could comment on the sheer idiocy of that statement, Thomas pressed Up on the keyboard, walking Smith down the street. He lifted his finger from the key, causing Smith to stop. Then he hit Ctrl + Z, which caused Smith's line of vision to zoom in on a man, normally suited, checking the bills stuffed in his mailbox.

"I'm gonna use my deadliest weapon," Thomas said gleefully. "When the Halo fanboys see this they're gonna crap right in their pink little panties!"

He button-mashed round the weapons menu, and selected among them a fifty-foot medieval catapult filled with meowing calico kittens.

"You have got to be shitting me," Smith muttered, as he sat in the middle of the catapult and a pair of wrestling kittens tumbled mewing over his lap.

"Okay," Thomas said. "I'm aiming for that guy."

"Why?"

"'Cause," said Thomas.

"But he's just checking his mail," Smith said. "Even by mainframe standards he's unremarkable."

"How would you know?"

"Trust me, I know," said the Agent, as a kitten sitting on his shoulder nom-nomed on his ear. "The Matrix_ invented _unremarkable."

The Matrix, pissed off that Smith just insulted its street cred, materialized a seventeen-story apartment building over the Agent's head, the likes of which cracked in half, poured out all its occupants and left him sitting in the exact same position pondering his moral dilemma.

"Crap," said the Matrix, which in human form looked suspiciously like Mr. T. "I'll be 'round later to bust yo' sorry-ass, foo'!"

"NOW, MY MINIONS!" Thomas screeched, firing the catapult at the poor man.

Mr. Rhineheart, without looking up from his mail, took half a step to the right and avoided the crater the mass of kittens caused in the concrete. "_Anderson!_" he cried. "Where the_ hell _are those projections you promised me?"

"NEVERRRRRRRRRR!" Thomas shrieked, despite the fact that nothing about that response made any type of sense. "WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER TO YOUR CAPITALIST REGIME!"

"Anderson, I swear to God, if you don't get those projections on my desk by this Friday afternoon, I guarantee you you won't be coming whitewater rafting with the rest of the company! Now quit playing around with your LARPy goth friends or whatever and _get your ass to work!_"

"They are_ not_ LARPy!" Thomas pouted. "They're_ DC fans_, thank you very much! Oh, and if I get those projections done, can I bring a cho—"

"NO ANDERSON YOU MAY NOT BRING A CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE WITH YOU ON A WHITEWATER RAFT."

Thomas sniffed, then lifted up Marty, his milkshake fiancee, and tenderly patted him on the head to protect him from Rhineheart's cruel discrimination. "Some people just don't understand our love, Marty... for they have no love in their hearts themselves!"

Smith crawled slowly out of the crater, ready to vomit from the sheer random. He pulled himself up, dragged his form across the concrete, and lay panting before Thomas. "Just get me to Freeman, Anderson, and I'll grant you a special request—ONE," he added, remembering the Great Milkshake Horror of Chapter Twelve.

"Really?" Thomas squealed. "You can get me and Marty our own raft and show Rhineheart who's boss?"

"Y..." Smith thought a moment, then dropped his head. He was too damn tired to do the calculations. But, also knowing whatever unfortunate things might result from this, he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shaky breath. "...yes."

"Well then, what're we waiting for, bitch?" Thomas shrieked, throwing Marty in a puddle across the street. "We're driving to Black Mesa!"

He hopped through the hatch of an M2A3 Bradley and ran Smith over with it.

* * *

"Where the hell have you been?"

Smith glared at his two cohorts, who had quarters stuck in every orifice of their digital bodies.

Brown rubbed at the back of his head, an act of which caused two million dollars in US mint to fall to the ground. "The owners of the arcade said we were not... kid friendly."

"But," said Jones, "I don't understand. I have my 'E for Everyone' rating tattooed right here on my scrotum—and if the parents display any doubts about it I show it to them. How is it I'm not kid friendly?"

Smith smacked himself in the forehead so hard his palm left a small dent in his cranial cap. Closed captions and other considerations for this chapter of PAI! provided by: The Denting Glove©! Brought to you from the makers of Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead! Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead! Facepalm™! Apply directly to the forehead!

"Look," he said. "I'm only going to be gone an hour, at the most. Now I know what's happened when I left you two alone before, and I just want you to know the same rules still apply."

Brown and Jones looked confused.

"Which ones?"

"Um," Smith said. "Those... _ones_...?"

"Oh," said Jones, "you mean the ones where we can't breathe for more than two times per hour?"

"Or the ones where we _can_ breathe more than two times per hour, but only to laugh at people wearing white after Labor Day?" Brown chipped in.

"Or the ones where we can't rob a grocery store, see some candy on the side counter, pick it up and purchase it for ten thousand dollars?"

"Or the ones where we_ can _rob a grocery store, but we have to do it _right_—we have to ask the cashier lady if she takes Visa first?"

"Or the ones where we can't sneeze in the library?"

"But it's OK to sneeze on the librarian?"

"Or if we crash our plane into the Indian Ocean, we have to reenact that one scene from Titanic? And not the drowning in ice cold water scene either, the painting each other nude scene whilst drowning in ice cold water?"

"Or if we ever go to a DC comic book convention we have to wear giant signs around our necks that say BATMAN IS A FILTHY-RICH NO-POWER WUSS, SPIDERMAN GETS ALL DA PUSS?"

"How about when we have to be home and in bed by two in the afternoon, right after our seven-hour bath?"

"Or if we bomb a country it has to be anyplace but North Korea?"

"But if we _do_ bomb North Korea, we have to send a package of fancy apples first?"

"And don't forget tracking down and assassinating every racist, sexist, and bigoted commenter on YouTube."

"How could anyone forget tracking down and assassinating 99.9999999% of YouTube," Jones sighed. "And water-boarding the other 0.0000001 percent."

"You know what?" Smith said a little too amicably, for at this time people were starting to stare at the Agents as if they were wards accidentally put on leave. "I think I'll take you two with me after all."

* * *

Thomas' Bradley pulled up into the Black Mesa Research Facility parking lot, the place where Smith's adversary worked. When he pushed open the door at the top, the Agents inside promptly gasped and started choking for air; Thomas had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque and driven straight to the moon.

"Oh," he said, in spite of the fact that one of his eyeballs had become detached and was now floating in zero G, "sorry. Looks like I made an oopsie. Tee hee." He then closed the door shut, jammed his eye back into its socket, waited two seconds for a portal to appear on the surface of the moon, watched Wheatley the Intelligence Dampening Sphere get sucked out into the utter blackness of space, and drove straight through the open portal, thus running over Chell and pissing off GLaDOS in spades. He shook his head as GLaDOS threatened him. He said he had to be on his way, rambling something excited and incoherent about milkshakes and whitewater rafting. He then climbed back into the Bradley and drove it straight through the wall of the AI's central chamber in Aperture Science... and pulled straight up into the Black Mesa Research Facility parking lot.

And on that day, ten thousand gamers cried out in rage and were suddenly silenced.

* * *

Thomas stood proudly in front of the research facility in New Mexico, admiring his mad skillz as The Ultimate Driver. Smith climbed over the Bradley's rim and threw up on the barren ground.

Thomas looked behind him, to a fast, ragged breathing. From the hole in the wall connecting Aperture to Black Mesa stood a hunched figure, weighed down by fifty pounds of artillery.

"You thought I forgot about you," Cave Johnson screeched. "You thought I was kidding? No! You poisoned me with all those moon rocks! I know it was you who lived on the moon! I know it was you who beamed your subliminal moon-messages into my brain! I know the truth! And now I'm gonna send you to hell... WITH MY LEMONS! OF DOOM!"

Grocers everywhere wet their pants a little upon hearing the echoes of this declaration.

But Thomas, ever the genre-savvy gamer, stomped on his head Mario-style, and caused the ancient founder of Aperture to merely disappear in a poof of code.

In his mind. In reality, the ancient founder of Aperture let out a blood-curdling scream as Thomas curb-stomped his skull into a pulpy mess—and then, lacing a shaky finger through one of the pins stuck in his combustible lemons, he pulled it, and thus ended his own misery. GLaDOS watched this entire scene in silent horror, and immediately scanned Thomas' form for future use… if only she could catch him, and turn him into a test subject, she could torture him for the rest of his miserable, pathetic life with the hardest tests ever known to sentience... oh, revenge, bloody, sweet, heinous _revenge_... she stretched her optic towards Thomas' dissolving form... further... _further_... ohhhh so _close _just a little bit _more_—

"This may have been a bad idea," she said, as she realized she had no fucking arms.

"Anyway," Thomas said as he climbed down a path of rocks, "who's this guy you gotta beef with?"

"Freeman? He's a bastard. Everyone loves him even though he doesn't utter a word," Smith said. "Y'know. The type of jackass who only talks when he's got something smart to say."

"Like Sheldon Cooper?"

Smith looked at him once, then ground his teeth.

"Yes, Mr. Anderson, just like Sheldon Cooper."

"Good," he replied. "'Cause I have no idea who the hell that is."

Smith broke a fifty-foot mesa from its foundations and used it to swing the smiling program clear across the world.

* * *

Meanwhile, after accidentally being revived by the cast of Star Trek, Gordon Freeman stepped into a teleporter and wound up back at Black Mesa. Turning around, he ripped off his red shirt, placed his trusty crowbar between his teeth and let out a soundless scream that puffed him up like a balloon. When his scream was finished he took the crowbar out, and the air hissed out of him like a long, not-entirely-unsatisfying rage fart. Just when a guy saved the world from his own damn mistake, and after weeks of fighting through that hell, he winds up _here? The worst place to get coffee, because no one knew how to use the damn filters correctly? _

He whirled around and began to hyperventilate. Not to mention the Agents were on his ass now, for God knows what—and, deciding he should just chill the fuck out, he sat down. He was _tired_, having floated in that horrible limbo for twenty years without even so much as a yo-yo to play with, and _bored_, and _hungry_—and this was his reward, after fighting Marines and aliens and mythical arcade machines—and—and—and—

OH CRACK ON TOAST HE LEFT THE OVEN ON AT HOME!

The words appeared in caps in a thought bubble above his head. Which was, incidentally, Wordpad. The words in the thought bubble deleted themselves as Gordon Freeman blinked, smiled, and formed a pretty pony picture out of ASCII. He just about finished the touches on the sparkly hooves when—

"FREEMAN!" The three Agents burst into the room led by a screaming Smith. Jones ran face-first into Freeman's thought-bubble and collapsed. "_It's time to pay for your crimes_!"

Freeman's thought bubble read: O_O

"_Don't tell me you don't remember_!" Smith shrieked, waving his gun around like a madman. "The casserole, man,_ the casserole!_"

The physicist rolled his eyes and turned around. Sticking out of the pants of his HEV suit, in a permanent wedgie, was the elastic band of his whitey-tideys. Red stitching sewn on by his mother read: GORDON FREEMAN. ALSO, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, FEEL FREE TO WEDGIE, SWIRLIE, AND PURPLE NURPLE MY SON AT ANY GIVEN TIME. HE IS A BAD LITTLE BOY AND MUST BE PUNISHED EVERY WAKING HOUR. HERE'S FOR NOT TAKING MY SUGGESTION OF GOING INTO BUSINESS MANAGEMENT LIKE YOUR FATHER! _**NERRRRRD!**_

"Oh, no, don't you play dumb with me," Smith said. "I never forget a name. Especially one that has wronged me..." Brown leaned into his ear and whispered something. "Or Gerardo. It's pretty hard to forget Gerardo."

THE FUCK'RE YOU? Freeman's thought-bubble said. THE SCIENCE POLICE?

"That's not very polite," Brown sniffed.

DAMN STRAIGHT, MOTHAFUCKA, Freeman typed.

"How come you don't talk? Are you mute?"

UNFORTUNATELY. UNTIL HER PREGNANCY IN HER EARLY THIRTIES, MY MOTHER MADE THE VERY QUESTIONABLE CHOICE OF SMOKING MEOW MIX. ...and in the very same millisecond it was made this response was deleted, as Freeman paused to think about what he was typing. Smith stood and folded his arms as he watched the theoretical physicist craft this alternate response: HOW COME YOU SO DAMN STOOPID?

"Oh, smart guy now?" Smith said. "_Psh. _No wonder Aperture kicked your ass. Only a _stupid_ research facility would use Notepad."

A flush spread across Freeman's cheeks, his nostrils pulsed, his jaws clenched together, but he kept himself otherwise composed as he closed his eyes and sent this line of text straight into Smith's brain: OH YEAH? LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE THIS SHEE-IT!

"Oh my GOD!" Smith screeched, flailing his arms about as though Freeman had taken a burning brand to his eyes. "Rick roll! RICK ROLL!"

Freeman grinned evilly, jumping out the window into an exit tram.

_Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and hurt you—_

"I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE PURPLE NURPLED THAT GUY!"

Smith ran around the facility screaming like a chicken with its head cut off as Jones and Brown sat at a small plastic table, pouring invisible tea for their teddy bears and pretty dollies.

"That joke is_ so _2003," Jones said.

Boiling with rage, Smith sank to the ground and screamed, Captain Kirk style: "FREEMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

* * *

So even though they'd chased the scientist through the halls of an abandoned research center for five hours, Gordon Freeman was still in hiding. However, as they crossed another narrow corridor they saw text messages scattered across the ground: _DX runnin 4 my life sux, herez da pizza delivery man beitchs trolololol luk at dat stoopid lolcat he so stoopid he cant climb up 2 eated da noms ahahahahaha_

The Agents raised an eyebrow looking at one another. They strolled down the hall, took a left, and opened a random kitchen cabinet door, revealing Gordon Freeman hunched inside, bathed in the glow of Icanhazcheezburger on his iPhone while crunching on three whole packages of Keebler Cookies at once. He stopped crunching the instant the Agents pried open the door, eyes widening beneath his glasses. He crunched twice more, blinking.

Freeman spat a chocolate chip in Jones' eye, which blinded him.

Smith and Brown leaped over his screaming form.

"_You're not getting off that easy, Freeman!_"

AGENT SMITH used DESERT EAGLE!

It's Not Very Effective...

GORDON FREEMAN used TRUSTY CROWBAR!

It's Not Very Effective...

AGENT SMITH used SCREAM OF RAGE!

It's Not Very Effective...

GORDON FREEMAN used LOLCAT CANT NOMZ!

It's Not Very Effective...

AGENT SMITH used LONG POLITICAL RANT ON THE INTERNET THAT HAS SCARCELY ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL BEING DISCUSSED!

It's Super-Effective!

SOME PERSON ON YOUTUBE passed out!

GORDON FREEMAN used RICK ROLL!

It's Super-Effective!

AGENT SMITH passed out!

* * *

Smith woke up in a white limbo.

"Wh... where am I?" He groaned as he pushed himself up. "Did I die?"

"Nah," said a luminous blue figure above him. "Development Hell." The figure looked down at him with a mixture of disgust and apathy, shaking his spiky quills ever so slightly. He then started tapping his foot.

"_Pac Man_?" Smith asked, gasping. "You finally got _clean_?"

Sonic the Motherfucking Hedgehog curb-stomped Smith in the nuts.

"OWWWWWWW FUCK YOU I'M AWAKE NOW YOU JERK!" He rolled over the pure white floor, moaning.

Bored now, Sonic glanced at an imaginary watch, ran in place, stopped, looked at Smith, narrowed his eyes, and tapped his foot again.

Smith stared at him.

"I... have a tic," Sonic said. "Shut up."

Smith shrugged.

"Anyway, did it ever occur to you to use the Konami code?"

"The whatsit?"

And Sonic was so flabbergasted with Smith's ignorance that he ran right off a cliff, never to be seen again. Upon hearing the tragic news I wept, and in the process cried the state of New York a sixth Great Lake, drowning innumerable Xboxes in the process. They were mourned in a mass funeral. I am now sitting in a cell in Alcatraz for my crimes. Don't worry. I plan to escape by menstruating another river in the San Francisco Bay.

"The Konami code," said Eggman, who pointed boredly at the polygon ceiling. Smith climbed up to the ceiling, pushed the cover open, peered up at the sky, and read: "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start."

A 1-Up popped up beside Smith. He lifted his finger to the 1 and touched it; as he did he felt the life shudder and flow again through his digital body, and it was stronger, much, much stronger this time...

* * *

Gordon Freeman sat around cheerfully with Jones and Brown, using Smith's unconscious body as a lawn chair, as they listened to Nicki Minaj on a hot-pink stereo and tried to catch some New Mexico rays whilst covered in full-body armor suits.

Smith snapped awake. He blinked in the hot, arid air. A voice from the sky, which was just Thomas on Autotune, boomed: "FINISH HIM."

The Agent stood up in bullet-time, ready to vanquish this unbeatable opponent. To relinquish his life, if necessary.

Gordon Freeman fell from his chair, ruined his tan, and glared accusingly at Smith.

Smith's heart pounded in his chest. Remember the casseroles, he thought. It's now... or never—

His mind running through the databanks at the speed of light, Smith accessed the most potent code of all: the Konami Code.

And then this happened.

"You know why I hate zombie games?" he said, as he lifted an eyebrow. "Because they're mindless." He then somberly took off his sunglasses, placed them back on the bridge of his nose, and made this declaration to the glowing L.A. sunset: "YEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH—"

And Gordon Freeman, having heard that horrible, horrible joke, blinked, and vanished in a poof of digital code.

The Agents stared at his ashes on the ground.

"I think you just committed fifty FCC violations in that sentence alone," said Brown.

* * *

And so it came to pass that Smith made good on his promise, and constructed Thomas a whitewater raft in return for helping him vanquish his mortal enemy. Thomas and Marty had a wonderful time pushing Rhineheart off a two hundred-foot cliff in Angel Falls. But Marty, secretly wanting Thomas' huge sum of life insurance, popped the cork in the raft and leaped out, watching on quite evilly as Thomas slipped down a giant whirlpool leading to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean whilst screaming bloody murder.

* * *

THA END.

_A/N: "...the Architect's shortcut for 'smack yo'self like you some trick at a slow-ass truckstop.'" I... I'm sorry. Every time I read that, I read it in an uber-gangsta voice, and then I laugh so hard tears leak out of my eyes. Does that make me a horrible person?_

_Yes. Yes it does._

_So I know this chapter has more nerdy insider-jokes than the previous have, a lot more pop culture humor than situational humor and what-not (I thought I was taking a major risk making Gordon Freeman the antagonist (ish) in this chapter, since not everyone plays Half-Life), but be assured that change ain't gonna stick. However, I was generally satisfied with how this chapter came out, in comparison to how it could have come out. (The first version of this chapter sucked balls. Just... trust me on this one.)_

_If you know the legend of Polybius... yeah. I'm not even gonna say it._

_If you got the combustible lemon joke, you've played way too much Portal. I love Cave Johnson. "Don't make lemonade! Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to burn your house down... with the lemons!" Oh God, I laughed SO HARD. And then, as he rants and raves, GLaDOS says: "Burning people! He says what we're all thinking!"_

_Oh, GLaDOS. I lurves you so much._

_An M2A3 Bradley is a sort-of tank, by the way. A military vehicle. Smith gets run over by a tank. Lolz. =p_

_Review!_


	18. Born on the Bayou

_A/N: Yeah, I know, I'm super-late to the party, as usual. BUT GUESS WHAT I BROUGHT?_

_...tacos!_

_(gets assassinated by the cookie enthusiasts)_

_Anyhoo. In this chapter Thomas shares his life story! YAY!  
_

_(dead body gets shot again)_

* * *

**Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XVI: Born on the Bayou (AKA The Kurt Vonnegut Chapter)**

* * *

"That," said Simon Cowell, "was the worst thing I have ever heard."

Thomas stood on the stage of "The X Factor" wearing a sombrero the size of New Mexico. Fuzzy gold balls dangling off the brim smacked three hundred thousand people in the face every time he turned half an inch to the left. He stood on his flaming unicycle clutching his maracas and musical squids with a confused, sad look in his eyes.

"I have heard a slew of atrocities in my time," the critic continued, twirling his pencil between his fingers, "but nothing—and I mean _nothing_—has ever made me hate the sense of hearing more than what you have just done here. I cannot adequately describe, in any human language, just how much hatred and rage you have stimulated inside me from that one performance alone. It makes me want to rip my own scalp out and harvest it for a stupider brain. It makes me want to round up every single instrument on this earth that could generate a pattern of sound and destroy it, so that we may never hear such farce again. It makes me want to perform a double van Gogh on myself, and perhaps on everyone else in this very room, as we all have been infected with your auditory blight and must be sterilized."

Silence met the panel.

"Where do I sign?" Thomas said.

* * *

A few hours later, Trinity, Morpheus, and Thomas were running around the hull, cleaning up—which, in Morpheus' opinion, was simply wiping off dust with rags made out of more dust—in preparation for the interviewers who were supposed to come in to question Thomas about his great musical achievement. Tank, who had been a good boy and cleaned his room already, was sitting in a chair in the corner, playing a Game Boy. He had resumed his duty as operator soon after Link resigned, after sustaining fatal injury button-mashing an illegal PC port of Mortal Kombat—

"What?" Tank said, pausing the game. "No, I was on sick leave, I just caught a really bad col—"

—broke both thumbs off—

Slowly, Tank wiggled his thumbs, then lifted his incredulous gaze to the camera and stared into the lens.

"The hell are you on, lady?"

—was put into cryogenic storage and resurrected after a team of doctors sewed them back on—

"And can I have some?"

—then caught a cold after eating a sneezed-on taco and died.

"Da FUQ?"

Again.

"Seriously guys, who the fuck is writing this?"

Who the fuck is Tank?

"Who the fuck are you?" Tank called out to the empty air as suddenly The Who's "Who Are You?" began to play. He whirled around to the three flitting figures of his friends. "Damn it, how come none of you guys are hearing this? ...Neo? ...Morpheus? ...Trinity? ..._Lolcat desktop?"_ He wept as he saw his adorable desktop darken into sleep mode, and banged his fists feverishly against the keyboard. "_Lolcat desktop! No! Speak to me! Say something! Anything! Answer me, Lolcat desktop! Oh, you MONSTER! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIENDS?_"

What if I said that you, puny human, are naught but an ant beneath my fifth-grade magnifying glass? That one displeasing word and I can burn you like the insignificance you are—that is, till Mom comes home and bitches at me about the gory mess I made on the sidewalk. Then I'll have to get out the broom and dustpan, and I'll be all like, "Man, this sucks," since she never lets me use the vacuum cleaner after I used it to suck in all the water from the bathtub that one time and blew out, like, three city blocks of power and she had to work her corners in the dark—how was I supposed to know vacuums blow-dried themselves clean?

"_I'll be good_?" Tank squeaked, his face pale and his voice very small as his eyes flicked across the room.

Yes. Yes you will.

Tank curled up in the corner and sucked on his thumb.

"_Neo_!" Morpheus called, slinging his dust-rag over his shoulder. "They'll be here any minute now! Have you finished sweeping up that pile of trash in your room and stuffing it suspiciously into the closet, and then closing the closet door half-assedly, and then shoving your dresser against that fucking pathetic attempt at shutting the closet door all the way to hold all that junk in, because if the world knew how much stuff you hoarded the FBI would burn your house down, like I told you to?"

"No!" Thomas said. "I just swept it and stuffed it into the closet and closed the closet door half-assedly and shoved my dresser against that fucking pathetic attempt at shutting the closet door all the way to hold all that junk in because since the world knows how much stuff I hoarded the_ CIA _burned my house down!"

"That's no good, Neo! They'll be here any minute now and OH MY STINKING SHIT THEY'RE ALREADY HERE!" He dove for cover as a random doorbell rung. When he came back out he looked like June Cleaver, his cheeks bloody from being stapled in a perpetual smile. Yanking the knob to the hull, he opened the door and waved the interviewers, which were small robots, inside.

The crew sat quietly as the robots set up their microphones. Except for Tank. Who wouldn't shut up about how adorable they looked.

Wall-E swiveled his head around, blinked, and bared fangs so venomous that every Sentinel in a ten thousand mile radius passed out from sheer fright.

"_Ooooh_, yoo ish sho_ kawaii_!" Tank shrilled, suddenly donning a Sailor Moon outfit.

Japan lifted a giant volcanic hand from the Pacific Ocean and facepalmed itself.

The robots gave Thomas the microphone, and asked him a question in binary, the likes of which took ten hours to process through the Neb's interface feed.

Thomas squinted at the screen. "Well, my momma, she didn't have no money, see? She and the old man, they din't got squat," he said sadly, having suddenly developed a thick country accent. "We was poorer than church mices... I only had an Xbox 360, a PS4, thirty laptops, seventeen emulators, two Samsung Galaxy tablets, fourteen Wiis, a Corvair, a Mustang, a '57 Ford, a Toyota Avalon, six hundred bass guitars, a tour bus, a beach house in Malibu, a jet plane on reserve in an airstrip in Jamaica, the Medicare corporation, a one-thousand and eight inch plasma screen TV that had access to HD, 3D, 4D, 5D, and the spiritual dimension, a library of old .45 records, CDs, and mp3 files that no one had ever heard of, every comic book ever produced, seven thousand pieces of unseen original artwork by Leonardo da Vinci, fifty Jacuzzis and hot tubs, water so clear and pure it came out like diamonds, crystal-encrusted toilets and bathtubs, fur coats in every hide, including elephant, caviar for dinner, five-star rare steak for breakfast, twenty thousand servants, and a stockroom full of solid silver, platinum and gold bars."

"Gee." Trinity yawned, propping her chin in her hand. "How did you ever walk away."

"Because I wanted a better life," Thomas said wistfully, looking up at the ceiling. "I wanted a life in which I could sit in a cockroach-infested apartment in a dangerous, dirty city and eat rotting Thai noodles and hear the neighbors have loud unsatisfying sex through paper-thin walls that threaten to crumble at any moment because my landlady is a selfish bitch who uses my rent money to give herself a manicure 'because she deserves it' instead of repairing the locks on our doors after burglars steal all of our meager supplies for the fourteenth time that hour, including our air, which they force from our mouths at gunpoint and put into glass bottles. Because Medicare don't cover for air resources, I hear."

Trinity began to shake, at first with rage, but then with all the emotions a human being could experience, wrapped up into a giant violent ball of motion and mass. Her eyes glazed over.

"I wanted better for myself than the squalor of having servants wipe my ass with diamond-encrusted satin. I was determined to make it out there, to make something of myself. And I did. I made myself into the man I always wanted to be: a man whose dead-end job is so stressful and unfulfilling it causes him to have schizophrenic episodes in which he believes he is being abducted into the 'real world' and taught 'the truth' by a bunch of black-suited cult people, shows such poor judgment he is willing to risk death or mutilation in exchange for some scant information, gets drugged and dragged away, presumably to get stuffed in a tub of ice while the black-suited cult people harvest his kidneys for profit, and in this schizoid dream-world he experiences a fulfillment fantasy in which only he can save the world from itself, and everything he needs to learn to do this is given to him, by everyone, unquestioningly, because he is Jesus come to earth. He does everything he needs to without any conscious effort, only half-assed proddings from his peers to 'Just be y'self, y'know?' because he is perfect and nothing he can do is ever wrong because it is what Fate decrees. He doesn't need to think or act for himself, because it is his Destiny to do whatever the fuck he wants, and also because the father figure believes in him and therefore encourages him to commit felony and murder and thoughtless genocide." And when Morpheus looked blankly at him, added: "Also droppin' some phat beats, yo." He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew some surprisingly rhythmic, but still fail-worthy, raspberries.

"Okay, Neo." Morpheus laid a gentle hand to Thomas', lowering them. "That's enough."

Thomas crossed his arms. "I just hope all this shit gets recorded," he said. "If this podcast gets cut off in the middle of my shower tonight I'm gonna be so freakin' _pissed_—"

"You listen to your own podcasts in the shower?"

"I do more than just listen." And Thomas grinned.

They stared at him until he forgot what he was grinning for and began to examine his ear wax for signs of alien parasites.

The robots turned to Morpheus, microphones extended.

"How did I first learn of the One?" he guessed, from their clicks and beeps. He mused, rubbing his chin. "Well, it wasn't easy—the Oracle had to be consulted numerous ti—"

"BORING!" Thomas screamed. He threw the microphone at Trinity, which hit her in the head, effectively disrupting her Super-Saiyan transformation. "Your turn, crazy lady!"

Trinity leaned into the microphone.

"All Trinity has got to say is," she said softly, "RAP IS FUCKING SHIT."

The interviewer bots, having heard that terrible admission, exploded.

Looking in on from a large television screen, a caped figure sat back in his high leather chair, raised one heavily-ringed hand, and stroked his fluffy white kitty-cat. He watched the tapes of the Zionite leaning into the microphone, uttering that... _damnable... utterance_... and then his bots exploding.

Simon Cowell's evil mustache fell off as he laughed maniacally at the screen. "You _fools_ have no_ idea_! I was all the way in India directing a Bollywood musical when your man performed that vile piece! And now that you've fallen into my trap, I can use you to perpetuate my brand of generic pop singers not only throughout the Matrix, but throughout the_ entire world! _MWA HA HA HA—" And then he fell out of his chair choking, for in the process of laughing like a Disney villain he had accidentally inhaled his stuffed animal kitty-cat.

* * *

The crew finished sweeping the smoking remains of the robots under the rug.

"Good going, Trinity," Tank said, turning away, "not only did you destroy the kawaii robots, now Neo won't ever be a celebrity, and I won't ever get to fulfill my dream of mooching off of someone famous and then sobbing like a bitch over his death when E! films the half-true saccharine biopic!"

Trinity flipped him off. Morpheus frowned, an action of which caused the staples in his cheeks to go flying around the room. One of them caused a short in a light panel.

"MY LIMELIGHT!" Thomas shrieked as the lights went out, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOkay then," as the generator kicked in, casting a crimson glow over everything.

Morpheus flicked on his flashlight, using it to examine the fuse box in the ceiling. "Crap," he said, "we forgot to pay the utility." He sighed as he flicked it off. "My check don't come in till tomorrow. We're in the dark till then."

Thomas whimpered. He was afraid of the dark. Sometimes the dark stuffed him into one of the lockers at school and didn't let him out. And no one believed him when he said the dark wedgied him on the school flagpole, and blew spitballs at his head, and said mean things to him in the lunch room, and pushed his face into the toilet, and tripped him when he went up to bat during gym, and tore up his notebooks, and stomped on his glasses, and made him watch the last season of Heroes—

"I say we tell ghost stories," Tank said. "I'll go first. Once upon a time, there was a girl with a sweater..."

Five hours later, sitting in a circle around the operator's chair while a random fire crackled in the middle, the three other members of the Nebuchadnezzar were either weeping, shaking with fright, or, in Morpheus' case, listening to "Walking on Sunshine" on repeat in his own head.

"...and the sweater never saw the girl again," Tank finished. "The end."

Morpheus burst into tears.

"I'm w-walking on s-sunshine," he blubbered, as snot ran down his nose, "whoa-oh, I'm walking on s-sunshine," —a sniff— "whoa-oh-oh, I-I'm w-walking on s-sunshine, whoa-oh-oh, AND DON'T IT FEEL GOO-HOO-HOO-HOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH GOD IT'S JUST SO SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"

He clutched Thomas like a teddy bear.

* * *

Having administered CPR on himself, Simon Cowell rose from the floor.

"A minor distraction!" he screeched. "Now it's time to enact my _real plan!_" Then, just as he began to launch another generic villain rant, he stepped on the stuffed animal kitty-cat he had spat up, which was drenched with saliva, tripped, and fell down the stairwell of the Space Needle.

* * *

"...and after Rhineheart fired him he was so afraid to surf TV Tropes again that whenever anybody referred to a trope by name, he screamed bloody murder right in their faces." Thomas concluded his scary story by making ghostly noises and wiggling his fingers.

"Hey Neo," Trinity said.

"What?"

"Cool Story Bro."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH—"

* * *

A bored cameraman walked across the set, stepped in front of the camera, and snapped a clapperboard that said CRAZY GUY TAKES OVER THE WORLD, TAKE THREE.

Simon Cowell stood up, having miraculously survived a two-inch drop from his bedroom window. He turned around, ready to carry out his evil plan, but then saw that his cape had sustained critical injury—a thorn from a nearby rose bush had brushed against his cape and made a microscopic tear in the fabric, one so small that not even ion lasers could detect it.

Simon Cowell burst into tears.

* * *

"...I'm walking on sunshine," Morpheus whispered in the creepiest voice possible as he held his flashlight under his chin. "Whoaaaaaa-ohhhhhh... I'm walking on sunshine... whoaaaaaaa-ohhhhhhh..."

The listeners' hearts were pounding in their chests. Beads of sweat glittered their brows. Thomas could even feel a bit of pee welling up in his bladder. That or the 52-ounce Slurpie he was sucking on.

"...I'm walking on sunnnnnnnnshine..."

Thomas bit his Slurpie's straw to a plastic nub.

"...whoaaaaaa-ohhhhhhhh-ohhhhhhhhh..."

Trinity and Tank rocked back and forth in their places, white and trembling.

Morpheus popped his eyes open.

"...and don't it feel GOOD!"

Tank puked.

* * *

After burying his beloved cape beside a pile of dog dung, Simon Cowell stuck his shovel into the shallow grave and ran off to complete his evil plan.

"Oh," said the pile of dog dung indignantly, who had just performed the cape's beautiful two-hour service, "what am I then, chopped liver?"

A slice of chopped liver, hearing this diss, cocked back the hammer of its Glock and shot the pile of dog dung in a bloody drive-by. The chopped liver, now donning a black bandana, black sunglasses, heavy silver chains and chest-covering tattoos, leaned out the window and fired nine more rounds into the air, scattering everybody. "Yo, this be Liva-Chop, sayin' we more badass than those Dog Dung Piles!" it screamed. "And don't y'all forget it, 'less you wanna cap in yo' bitch-ass!" It then cackled as its partner slammed down on the gas pedal and smashed their car straight into a deli. And the poor, poor reporters who were assigned to broadcast this bit of news died choking of hysterical laughter.

* * *

"...and that was the time Trinity fought the law," Trinity said. "Let's just say the law's not kickin' any time soon."

Everybody fell over laughing.

"His wife was really upset when she heard the news."

Thomas spat out his drink.

"His kids swore vengeance on Trinity for the rest of their lives."

Tank turned purple.

"And then they found out he had no life insurance, leaving them impoverished and living in cardboard boxes forevermore."

One of Morpheus' lungs collapsed.

* * *

The critic looked left. Right.

He ran into a radio station, bust open the door as a DJ for an alternative station was sitting there playing the same three Silversun Pickup songs, pushed him over and jammed his thumb on the "record" button.

"PEOPLE OF EARTH!" Simon Cowell screeched. "MY NAME IS SIMON MOTHAFUCKING COWELL! I AM THE BIGGEST SHIT ALIVE! YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ME ON TELEVISION, OR MAYBE ON THE RADIO... LIKE RIGHT NOW... BUT RADIOS DON'T HAVE EYES BUT WHATEVER! YOU GET THE POINT..."

* * *

Sitting at the kitchen table while Jones flipped pancakes, Smith flicked open the morning paper, whose headline read GANG SHOOTING DOWNTOWN: CHOPPED LIVER TO BLAME? DOG DUNG SUING FOR EMOTIONAL TRAUMA. Without taking his eyes off the paper, he patted Brown on the head as Brown, squatting, dropped the week's grocery ads from his mouth onto the floor. Brown barked and scampered off on all fours to go scratch up a random threshold that neither Agent paid much attention to and would get suddenly huffy over once it _was_ scratched, as if it were the fricking answer to the universe.

Jones turned up the radio to drown out the sound of Brown's stumpy nails dragging across the wood.

"FOR FAR TOO LONG WE HAVE HAD TO SUFFER THE EVULZ OF RHYTHM AND SOUND!" The voice of Simon Cowell leaked through the crackling speakers. "FOR FAR TOO LONG WE HAVE HAD TO STRUGGLE IN THE SHADOWS OF MUSIC'S DISTINCT GENRES, SUCH AS ROCK, RAP, HIP-HOP, METAL, GRUNGE, NEW WAVE, COUNTRY, BLUEGRASS, POP, JAZZ, REGGAE, BLUES, R&B, CLASSICAL, OPERA, ALTERNATIVE, TECHNO, DANCE, RAVE, TRADITIONAL, ADULT, MALT-SHOP, DOO-WOP, DUBSTEP, PARODY, AND THAT ONE CORNER OF K-MART THAT YOU'RE NOT REALLY SURE ABOUT BECAUSE EVERYTHING'S LIKE SMUSHED TOGETHER IN THE ELECTRONICS AISLE BECAUSE THAT TEENAGED BITCH WHO STOCKS EVERYTHING DOESN'T HAVE THE PATIENCE TO SORT THE CSI DVDS FROM THE BON JOVI CDS, SO WHEN YOU GO HOME YOU OPEN UP "SLIPPERY WHEN WET" EXPECTING SOME WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE OR LIVIN' ON A PRAYER OR SOME SHIT BUT IT'S ACTUALLY THE FIRST EPISODE OF CSI MIAMI AND IT RUINS THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR COMPUTER BECAUSE LINUX DOESN'T SUPPORT THAT MUCH EPIC!"

Smith and Jones looked at one another.

Smith's eyes narrowed.

"Are those flapjacks or pancakes?" said Smith.

* * *

"BUT NOW I HAVE A SOLUTION! IT WILL FREE US ALL FROM THE AGONY OF MAKING OUR OWN MUSICAL CHOICES!" Simon Cowell continued. "I WILL FREE YOU ALL! ONCE YOU BUY MY LINE OF CDS, YOU WILL NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING TO YOUR IPODS AGAIN! NEVERMORE WILL YOU BOW TO THE SUPREMACY OF DIVERSITY! NEVERMORE WILL YOU HAVE TASTES FOR YOURSELF! NEVERMORE WILL YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR OWN BRAIN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND DO NOT LIKE! NEVER EVER EVERMORE!"

And Edgar Allen Poe, having heard that gross abuse of his most famous line, died.

"BUY MY CDS! ONLY ZERO DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS..." And the commercial products announcer who came after him said, in rapid-fire: "Shipping and handling two hundred million dollars. Comes with complimentary set of gasoline and incense if you call within the next point two seconds. Lines are open a limited time, so call now! Void where prohibited. See rules and regulations for details. We are not liable for any injuries sustained during the shipping process, including any four-hour boners you may experience while waiting in sheer anticipation. Please contact your doctor if your boner lasts for more than four hours or if small children start to hang their winter coats on it."

* * *

Jones looked meekly at Smith.

"F...flapjacks," he stammered, clutching the rim of his frying pan.

Smith took a step forward, ready to kill—then, realizing killing Jones would mean no one to change Brown's litter box, stopped, sank back in his chair, and started shoveling the... _abomination_ that his cohorts called pancakes into his mouth, swearing vengeance between each vile bite.

Jones picked up the day's grocery ads from the floor.

"Oh, look," Jones said, perhaps a little too cheerfully, "they have chopped liver on sale!"

And Smith killed Jones.

* * *

Thomas, now bored, turned on the radio, and heard his performance blast through the speakers.

"Hey!" he called. "Guys, c'mere and take a listen! They're playing my song! From the show!"

The others rushed over. After a minute of listening, Trinity lifted an eyebrow.

"_Born on the Bayou_?"

"Yeah," Thomas said. And then he screeched the eponymous song so loudly that, somewhere, John Fogherty sat up in bed, placed one hand over his heart, and shed a single manly tear for the beauty of rock-'n'-roll.

Tears welled in their eyes.

...It was the most beautiful song they'd ever heard.

* * *

His plan worked. Oh, his beautiful plan worked... his evil, beautiful plan—

Simon Cowell awoke with a jolt in his hotel bed.

He looked up.

Down.

"So _that's_ what happened to all my mescaline," he said.

* * *

THA END.

Stay tuned for "Pointless Agent Insanity! Part XVII: The Cuteness War"!


End file.
